At the piping of all hands,
When the judgment signal’s spread—
When the islands and the land,
And the seas give up their dead,
And the south and the north shall come;
When the sinner is dismayed,
And the just man is afraid,
Then heaven be thy aid,
Poor Tom.
Brainard.
The people had now a cessation from their toil.
Of all the labor known to sea-faring men, that of
pumping is usually thought to be the most severe.
Those who work at it have to be relieved every
minute, and it is only by having gangs to succeed
each other, that the duty can be done at all with
any thing like steadiness. In the present instance,
it is true, that the people of the Swash were sustained
by the love of gold, but glad enough were they when
Mulford called out to them to “knock off, and turn
in for the night.” It was high time this summons
should be made, for not only were the people excessively
wearied, but the customary hours of labor
were so far spent, that the light of the moon had
some time before begun to blend with the little left
by the parting sun. Glad enough were all hands
to quit the toil; and two minutes were scarcely
elapsed ere most of the crew had thrown themselves
down, and were buried in deep sleep. Even
Spike and Mulford took the rest they needed, the
cook alone being left to look out for the changes in
the weather. In a word, everybody but this idler was
exhausted with pumping and bailing, and even gold
had lost its power to charm, until nature was recruited
by rest.
The excitement produced by the scenes through
which they had so lately passed, caused the females
to sleep soundly, too. The death-like stillness which
pervaded the vessel contributed to their rest, and
Rose never woke, from the first few minutes after
her head was on her pillow, until near four in the
morning. The deep quiet seemed ominous to one
who had so lately witnessed the calm which precedes
the tornado, and she arose. In that low latitude
and warm season, few clothes were necessary,
and our heroine was on deck in a very few
minutes. Here she found the same grave-like sleep
pervading every thing. There was not a breath of
air, and the ocean seemed to be in one of its profoundest
slumbers. The hard-breathing of Spike
could be heard through the open windows of his
state-room, and this was positively the only sound
that was audible. The common men, who lay
scattered about the decks, more especially from the
mainmast forward, seemed to be so many logs, and
from Mulford no breathing was heard.
The morning was neither very dark, nor very
light, it being easy to distinguish objects that were
near, while those at a distance were necessarily
lost in obscurity. Availing herself of the circumstance,
Rose went as far as the gangway, to ascertain
if the cook were at his post. She saw him
lying near his galley, in as profound a sleep as any
of the crew. This she felt to be wrong, and she
felt alarmed, though she knew not why. Perhaps
it was the consciousness of being the only person up
and awake at that hour of deepest night, in a vessel
so situated as the Swash, and in a climate in which
hurricanes seem to be the natural offspring of the
air. Some one must be aroused, and her tastes,
feelings, and judgment, all pointed to Harry Mulford
as the person she ought to awaken. He slept
habitually in his clothes—the lightest summer dress
of the tropics; and the window of his little state-room
was always open for air. Moving lightly to
the place, Rose laid her own little, soft hand on the
arm of the young man, when the latter was on his
feet in an instant. A single moment only was
necessary to regain his consciousness, when Mulford
left the state-room and joined Rose on the
quarter-deck.
“Why am I called, Rose,” the young man asked,
attempering his voice to the calm that reigned around
him; “and why am I called by you?”
Rose explained the state of the brig, and the feeling
which induced her to awaken him. With woman’s
gentleness she now expressed her regret for
having robbed Harry of his rest; had she reflected
a moment, she might have kept watch herself, and
allowed him to obtain the sleep he must surely so
much require.
But Mulford laughed at this; protested he had
never been awoke at a more favorable moment,
and would have sworn, had it been proper, that a
minute’s further sleep would have been too much
for him. After these first explanations, Mulford
walked round the decks, carefully felt how much
strain there was on the purchases, and rejoined
Rose to report that all was right, and that he did not
consider it necessary to call even the cook. The
black was an idler in no sense but that of keeping
watch, and he had toiled the past day as much as any
of the men, though it was not exactly at the
pumps.
A long and a semi-confidential conversation now
occurred between Harry and Rose. They talked of
Spike, the brig, and her cargo, and of the delusion
of the captain’s widow. It was scarcely possible that
powder should be so much wanted at the Havanna
as to render smuggling, at so much cost, a profitable
adventure; and Mulford admitted his convictions
that the pretended flour was originally intended for
Mexico. Rose related the tenor of the conversation
she had overheard between the two parties,
Don Juan and Don Esteban, and the mate no longer
doubted that it was Spike’s intention to sell the brig
to the enemy. She also alluded to what had passed
between herself and the stranger.
Mulford took this occasion to introduce the subject
of Jack Tier’s intimacy and favor with Rose.
He even professed to feel some jealousy on account
of it, little as there might be to alarm most men in
the rivalry of such a competitor. Rose laughed, as
girls will laugh when there is question of their
power over the other sex, and she fairly shook her
rich tresses as she declared her determination to
continue to smile on Jack, to the close of the voyage.
Then, as if she had said more than she intended, she
added with woman’s generosity and tenderness,—
“After all, Harry, you know how much I promised
to you even before we sailed, and how much
more since, and have no just cause to dread even
Jack. There is another reason, however, that
ought to set your mind entirely at ease on his account.
Jack is married, and has a partner living at
this very moment, as he does not scruple to avow
himself.”
A hissing noise, a bright light, and a slight
explosion, interrupted the half-laughing girl, and
Mulford, turning on his heel, quick as thought, saw
that a rocket had shot into the air, from a point close
under the bows of the brig. He was still in the act
of moving toward the forecastle, when, at the distance
of several leagues, he saw the explosion of
another rocket high in the air. He knew enough
of the practices of vessels of war, to feel certain that
these were a signal and its answer from some one
in the service of government. Not at all sorry to
have the career of the Swash arrested, before she
could pass into hostile hands, or before evil could
befall Rose, Mulford reached the forecastle just in
time to answer the inquiry that was immediately
put to him, in the way of a hail. A gig, pulling four
oars only, with two officers in its stern-sheets, was
fairly under the vessel’s bows, and the mate could
almost distinguish the countenance of the officer
who questioned him, the instant he showed his head
and shoulders above the bulwarks.
“What vessels are these?” demanded the
stranger, speaking in the authoritative manner of
one who acted for the state, but not speaking much
above the usual conversational tone.
“American and Spanish,” was the answer. “This
brig is American—the schooner alongside is a
Spaniard, that turned turtle in a tornado, about six-and-thirty
hours since, and on which we have been
hard at work trying to raise her, since the gale which
succeeded the tornado has blown its pipe out.”
“Ay, ay, that’s the story, is it? I did not know
what to make of you, lying cheek by jowl, in
this fashion. Was anybody lost on board the
schooner?”
“All hands, including every soul aft and forward,
the supercargo excepted, who happened to be
aboard here. We buried seventeen bodies this
afternoon on the smallest of the Keys that you see
near at hand, and two this morning alongside of the
light. But what boat is that, and where are you
from, and whom are you signaling?”
“The boat is a gig,” answered the stranger, deliberately,
“and she belongs to a cruiser of Uncle
Sam’s, that is off the reef, a short bit to the eastward,
and we signaled our captain. But I’ll come on
board you, sir, if you please.”
Mulford walked aft to meet the stranger at the
gangway, and was relieved, rather than otherwise,
at finding that Spike was already on the quarter-deck.
Should the vessel of war seize the brig, he
could rejoice at it, but so strong were his professional
ideas of duty to the craft he sailed in, that
he did not find it in his heart to say aught against
her. Were any mishap to befall it, or were justice
to be done, he preferred that it might be done under
Spike’s own supervision, rather than under his.
“Call all hands, Mr. Mulford,” said Spike, as they
met. “I see a streak of day coming yonder in the
east—let all hands be called at once. What strange
boat is this we have alongside?”
This question was put to the strangers, Spike
standing on his gangway-ladder to ask it, while the
mate was summoning the crew. The officer saw
that a new person was to be dealt with, and in his
quiet, easy way, he answered, while stretching out
his hands to take the man-rope—
“Your servant, sir—we are man-of-war’s men,
belonging to one of Uncle Sam’s craft, outside, and
have just come in to pay you a visit of ceremony.
I told one, whom I suppose was your mate, that I
would just step on board of you.”
“Ay, ay—one at a time, if you please. It’s wartime,
and I cannot suffer armed boats’ crews to
board me at night, without knowing something
about them. Come up yourself, if you please, but
order your people to stay in the boat. Here, muster
about this gangway, half a dozen of you, and keep
an eye on the crew of this strange boat.”
These orders had no effect on the cool and deliberate
lieutenant, who ascended the brig’s side,
and immediately stood on her deck. No sooner
had he and Spike confronted each other, than each
gave a little start, like that of recognition, and the
lieutenant spoke.
“Ay, ay—I believe I know this vessel now. It
is the Molly Swash, of New York, bound to Key
West, and a market; and I have the honor to see
Capt. Stephen Spike again.”
It was Mr. Wallace, the second lieutenant of the
sloop-of-war that had boarded the brig in the Mona
Passage, and to avoid whom Spike had gone to the
southward of Jamaica. The meeting was very
mal-à-propos, but it would not do to betray that the
captain and owner of the vessel thought as much
as this; on the contrary, Wallace was warmly welcomed,
and received, not only as an old acquaintance,
but as a very agreeable visiter. To have
seen the two, as they walked aft together, one might
have supposed that the meeting was conducive of
nothing but a very mutual satisfaction, it was so
much like that which happens between those who
keep up a hearty acquaintance.
“Well, I’m glad to see you again, Capt. Spike,”
cried Wallace, after the greetings were passed, “if
it be only to ask where you flew to, the day we left
you in the Mona Passage? We look’d out for you
with all our eyes, expecting you would be down
between San Domingo and Jamaica, but I hardly
think you got by us in the night. Our master thinks
you must have dove, and gone past loon-fashion.
Do you ever perform that manœuvre?”
“No, we’ve kept above water the whole time,
lieutenant,” answered Spike, heartily; “and that is
more than can be said of the poor fellow alongside
of us. I was so much afraid of the Isle of Pines,
that I went round Jamaica.”
“You might have given the Isle of Pines a berth,
and still have passed to the northward of the
Englishmen,” said Wallace, a little drily. “However,
that island is somewhat of a scarecrow, and
we have been to take a look at it ourselves. All’s
right there, just now. But you seem light; what
have you done with your flour?”
“Parted with every barrel of it. You may remember
I was bound to Key West, and a market.
Well, I found my market here, in American waters.”
“You have been lucky, sir. This ‘emporium’
does not seem to be exactly a commercial emporium.”
“The fact is, the flour is intended for the Havanna;
and I fancy it is to be shipped for slavers.
But I am to know nothing of all that, you’ll understand,
lieutenant. If I sell my flour in American
waters, at two prices, it’s no concern of mine what
becomes of it a’terwards.”
“Unless it happen to pass into enemy’s hands,
certainly not; and you are too patriotic to deal with
Mexico, just now, I’m sure. Pray, did that flour
go down when the schooner turned turtle?”
“Every barrel of it; but Don Wan, below there,
thinks that most of it may yet be saved, by landing
it on one of those Keys to dry. Flour, well packed,
wets in slowly. You see we have some of it on deck.”
“And who may Don Wan be, sir, pray? We are
sent here to look after Dons and Donas, you know.”
“Don Wan is a Cuban merchant, and deals in
such articles as he wants. I fell in with him among
the reefs here, where he was rummaging about in
hopes of meeting with a wrack, he tells me, and
thinking to purchase something profitable in that
way; but finding I had flour, he agreed to take it
out of me at this anchorage, and send me away in
ballast at once. I have found Don Wan Montefalderon
ready pay, and very honorable.”
Wallace then requested an explanation of the
disaster, to the details of which he listened with a
sailor’s interest. He asked a great many questions,
all of which bore on the more nautical features of the
event, and day having now fairly appeared, he examined
the purchases and backings of the Swash
with professional nicety. The schooner was no
lower in the water than when the men had knocked
off work the previous night; and Spike set the
people at the pumps and their bailing again, as the
most effectual method of preventing their making
any indiscreet communications to the man-of-war’s
men.
About this time the relict appeared on deck,
when Spike gallantly introduced the lieutenant
anew to his passengers. It is true he knew no
name to use, but that was of little moment, as he
called the officer “the lieutenant,” and nothing else.
Mrs. Budd was delighted with this occasion to
show-off, and she soon broke out on the easy,
indolent, but waggish Wallace, in a strain to surprise
him, notwithstanding the specimen of the lady’s
skill from which he had formerly escaped.
“Capt. Spike is of opinion, lieutenant, that our
cast-anchor here is excellent, and I know the value
of a good cast-anchor place; for my poor Mr. Budd
was a sea-faring man, and taught me almost as
much of your noble profession as he knew himself.”
“And he taught you, ma’am,” said Wallace, fairly
opening his eyes, under the influence of astonishment,
“to be very particular about cast-anchor
places!”
“Indeed he did. He used to say, that roads-instead
were never as good, for such purposes, as
land that’s locked havens, for the anchors would
return home, as he called it, in roads-instead.”
“Yes, ma’am,” answered Wallace, looking very
queer at first, as if disposed to laugh outright, then
catching a glance of Rose, and changing his mind;
“I perceive that Mr. Budd knew what he was about,
and preferred an anchorage, where he was well
land-locked, and where there was no danger of his
anchors coming home, as so often happens in your
open roadsteads.”
“Yes, that’s just it! That was just his notion!
You cannot feel how delightful it is, Rose, to converse
with one that thoroughly understands such
subjects! My poor Mr. Budd did, indeed, denounce
roads-instead, at all times calling them ‘savage.’”
“Savage, aunt,” put in Rose, hoping to stop the
good relict by her own interposition—“that is a
strange word to apply to an anchorage!”
“Not at all, young lady,” said Wallace gravely.
“They are often wild berths, and wild berths are
not essentially different from wild beasts. Each is
savage, as a matter of course.”
“I knew I was right!” exclaimed the widow.
“Savage cast-anchors come of wild births, as do
savage Indians. Oh! the language of the ocean, as
my poor Mr. Budd used to say, is eloquence tempered
by common sense!”
Wallace stared again, but his attention was called
to other things, just at that moment. The appearance
of Don Juan Montefalderon y Castro on deck,
reminded him of his duty, and approaching that
gentleman he condoled with him on the grave loss
he had sustained. After a few civil expressions on
both sides, Wallace made a delicate allusion to the
character of the schooner.
“Under other circumstances,” he said, “it might
be my duty to inquire a little particularly as to the
nationality of your vessel, Señor, for we are at war
with the Mexicans, as you doubtless know.”
“Certainly,” answered Don Juan, with an unmoved
air and great politeness of manner, “though
it would be out of my power to satisfy you. Every
thing was lost in the schooner, and I have not a
paper of any sort to show you. If it be your pleasure
to make a prize of a vessel in this situation,
certainly it is in your power to do it. A few barrels
of wet flour are scarce worth disputing about.”
Wallace now seemed a little ashamed, the sang
froid of the other throwing dust in his eyes, and he
was in a hurry to change the subject. Señor Don
Juan was very civilly condoled with again, and he
was made to repeat the incidents of the loss, as if
his auditor took a deep interest in what he said,
but no further hint was given touching the nationality
of the vessel. The lieutenant’s tact let him
see that Señor Montefalderon was a person of a
very different calibre from Spike, as well as of different
habits, and he did not choose to indulge in
the quiet irony that formed so large an ingredient
in his own character, with this new acquaintance.
He spoke Spanish himself with tolerable fluency,
and a conversation now occurred between the two,
which was maintained for some time with spirit
and a very manifest courtesy.
This dialogue between Wallace and the Spaniard
gave Spike a little leisure for reflection. As the
day advanced the cruiser came more and more
plainly in view, and his first business was to take a
good survey of her. She might have been three
leagues distant, but approaching with a very light
breeze, at the rate of something less than two knots
in the hour. Unless there was some one on board
her who was acquainted with the channels of the
Dry Tortugas, Spike felt little apprehension of the
ship’s getting very near to him; but he very well
understood that, with the sort of artillery that was
in modern use among vessels of war, he would
hardly be safe could the cruiser get within a
league. That near Uncle Sam’s craft might certainly
come without encountering the hazards of the
channels, and within that distance she would be
likely to get in the course of the morning, should he
have the complaisance to wait for her. He determined,
therefore, not to be guilty of that act of folly.
All this time the business of lightening the
schooner proceeded. Although Mulford earnestly
wished that the man-of-war might get an accurate
notion of the true character and objects of the brig,
he could not prevail on himself to become an informer.
In order to avoid the temptation so to do,
he exerted himself in keeping the men at their tasks,
and never before had pumping and bailing been
carried on with more spirit. The schooner soon
floated of herself, and the purchases which led to
the Swash were removed. Near a hundred more
barrels of the flour had been taken out of the hold
of the Spanish craft, and had been struck on the
deck of the brig, or sent to the Key by means of the
boats. This made a material change in the buoyancy
of the vessel, and enabled the bailing to go
on with greater facility. The pumps were never
idle, but two small streams of water were running
the whole time toward the scuppers, and through
them into the sea.
At length the men were ordered to knock off, and
to get their breakfasts. This appeared to arouse
Wallace, who had been chatting, quite agreeably to
himself, with Rose, and seemed reluctant to depart,
but who now became sensible that he was neglecting
his duty. He called away his boat’s crew, and
took a civil leave of the passengers; after which he
went over the side. The gig was some little distance
from the Swash, when Wallace rose and
asked to see Spike, with whom he had a word to
say at parting.
“I will soon return,” he said, “and bring you
forty or fifty fresh men, who will make light work
with your wreck. I am certain our commander
will consent to my doing so, and will gladly send
on board you two or three boats’ crews.”
“If I let him,” muttered Spike between his teeth,
“I shall be a poor, miserable cast-anchor devil,
that’s all.”
To Wallace, however, he expressed his hearty
acknowledgments; begged him not to be in a hurry,
as the worst was now over, and the row was still
a long one. If he got back toward evening it would
be all in good time. Wallace waved his hand, and
the gig glided away. As for Spike, he sat down on
the plank-sheer where he had stood, and remained
there ruminating intently for two or three minutes.
When he descended to the deck his mind was fully
made up. His first act was to give some private
orders to the boatswain, after which he withdrew
to the cabin, whither he summoned Tier, without
delay.
“Jack,” commenced the captain, using very little
circumlocution in opening his mind, “you and I are
old shipmates, and ought to be old friends, though I
think your natur’ has undergone some changes
since we last met. Twenty years ago there was
no man in the ship on whom I could so certainly
depend as on Jack Tier; now, you seem given up
altogether to the women. Your mind has changed
even more than your body.”
“Time does that for all of us, Capt. Spike,” returned
Tier coolly. “I am not what I used to be,
I’ll own, nor are you yourself for that matter.
When I saw you last, noble captain, you were a
handsome man of forty, and could go aloft with any
youngster in the brig; but, now, you’re heavy, and
not over active.”
“I!—Not a bit of change has taken place in me
for the last thirty years. I defy any man to show
the contrary. But that’s neither here nor there;
you are no young woman, Jack, that I need be
boasting of my health and beauty before you. I
want a bit of real sarvice from you, and want it done
in old-time’s fashion; and I mean to pay for it in old-time’s
fashion, too.”
As Spike concluded, he put into Tier’s hand one
of the doubloons that he had received from Señor
Montefalderon, in payment for the powder. The
doubloons, for which so much pumping and bailing
were then in process, were still beneath the waters
of the gulf.
“Ay, ay, sir,” returned Jack, smiling and pocketing
the gold, with a wink of the eye, and a knowing
look; “this does resemble old times sum’at. I now
begin to know Capt. Spike, my old commander
again, and see that he’s more like himself than I
had just thought him. What am I to do for
this, sir; speak plain, that I may be sartain to steer
the true course?”
“Oh, just a trifle, Jack—nothing that will break up
the ground tier of your wits, my old shipmate. You
see the state of the brig, and know that she is in no
condition for ladies.”
“’Twould have been better all round, sir, had
they never come aboard at all,” answered Jack,
looking dark.
Spike was surprised, but he was too much bent
on his projects to heed trifles.
“You know what sort of flour they’re whipping
out of the schooner, and must understand that the
brig will soon be in a pretty litter. I do not intend
to let them send a single barrel of it beneath my
hatches again, but the deck and the islands must
take it all. Now I wish to relieve my passengers
from the confinement this will occasion, and I have
ordered the boatswain to pitch a tent for them on
the largest of these here Tortugas; and what I want
of you, is to muster food and water, and other
woman’s knickknacks, and go ashore with them,
and make them as comfortable as you can for a
few days, or until we can get this schooner loaded
and off.”
Jack Tier looked at his commander as if he would
penetrate his most secret thoughts. A short pause
succeeded, during which the steward’s mate was
intently musing, then his countenance suddenly
brightened; he gave the doubloon a fillip, and caught
it on the palm of his hand as it descended, and he
uttered the customary “Ay, ay, sir,” with apparent
cheerfulness. Nothing more passed between these
two worthies, who now parted, Jack to make his
arrangements, and Spike to “tell his yarn,” as he
termed the operation in his own mind, to Mrs. Budd,
Rose, and Biddy. The widow listened complacently,
though she seemed half doubting, half ready
to comply. As for Rose, she received the proposal
with delight—the confinement of the vessel having
become irksome to her. The principal obstacle was
in overcoming the difficulties made by the aunt,
Biddy appearing to like the notion quite as much as
“Miss Rosy.” As for the light-house, Mrs. Budd
had declared nothing would induce her to go there;
for she did not doubt that the place would soon be,
if it were not already, haunted. In this opinion she
was sustained by Biddy; and it was the knowledge
of this opinion that induced Spike to propose the
tent.
“Are you sure, Capt. Spike, it is not a desert
island?” asked the widow; “I remember that my
poor Mr. Budd always spoke of desert islands as
horrid places, and spots that every one should
avoid.”
“What if it is, aunty,” said Rose, eagerly, “while
we have the brig here, close at hand. We shall
suffer none of the wants of such a place, so long as
our friends can supply us.”
“And such friends, Miss Rose,” exclaimed Spike,
a little sentimentally for him, “friends that would
undergo hunger and thirst themselves, before you
should want for any comforts.”
“Do, now, Madam Budd,” put in Biddy, in her
hearty way, “it’s an island, ye’ll remimber; and
sure that’s just what ould Ireland has ever been,
God bless it! Islands make the pleasantest risidences.”
“Well, I’ll venture to oblige you and Biddy, Rosy,
dear,” returned the aunt, still half reluctant to yield;
“but you’ll remember, that if I find it at all a desert
island, I’ll not pass the night on it on any account
whatever.”
With this understanding the party was transferred
to the shore. The boatswain had already erected a
sort of a tent, on a favorable spot, using some of the
old sails that had covered the flour-barrels, not only
for the walls, but for a carpet of some extent also.
This tent was ingeniously enough contrived. In
addition to the little room that was entirely enclosed,
there was a sort of piazza, or open verandah, which
would enable its tenants to enjoy the shade in the
open air. Beneath this verandah, a barrel of
fresh water was placed, as well as three or four
ship’s stools, all of which had been sent ashore with
the materials for constructing the tent. The boat
had been going and coming for some time, and the
distance being short, the “desert island” was soon
a desert no longer. It is true that the supplies
necessary to support three women for as many days,
were no great matter, and were soon landed, but
Jack Tier had made a provision somewhat more
ample. A capital caterer, he had forgotten nothing
within the compass of his means, that could contribute
to the comfort of those who had been put
especially under his care. Long before the people
“knocked off” for their dinners, the arrangements
were completed, and the boatswain was ready to
take his leave.
“Well, ladies,” said that grum old salt, “I can do
no more for you, as I can see. This here island is
now almost as comfortable as a ship that has been
in blue water for a month, and I don’t know how it
can be made more comfortabler.”
This was only according to the boatswain’s notion
of comfort; but Rose thanked him for his care in her
winning way, while her aunt admitted that, “for a
place that was almost a desert island, things did
look somewhat promising.” In a few minutes the
men were all gone, and the islet was left to the sole
possession of the three females, and their constant
companion, Jack Tier. Rose was pleased with the
novelty of her situation, though the islet certainly
did deserve the opprobrium of being a “desert
island.” There was no shade but that of the tent,
and its verandah-like covering, though the last, in
particular, was quite extensive. There was no
water, that in the barrel and that of the ocean excepted.
Of herbage there was a very little on this
islet, and that was of the most meagre and coarse
character, being a long wiry grass, with here and
there a few stunted bushes. The sand was reasonably
firm, however, more especially round the
shore, and the walking was far from unpleasant.
Little did Rose know it, but a week earlier, the spot
would have been next to intolerable to her, on account
of the mosquitoes, gallinippers, and other
similar insects of the family of tormentors, but every
thing of the sort had temporarily disappeared in the
currents of the tornado. To do Spike justice, he
was aware of this circumstance, or he might have
hesitated about exposing females to the ordinary
annoyances of one of these spots. Not a mosquito,
or any thing of the sort was left, however, all having
gone to leeward, in the vortex which had come
so near sweeping off the Mexican schooner.
“This place will do very well, aunty, for a day or
two,” cried Rose cheerfully, as she returned from
a short excursion, and threw aside her hat, one
made to shade her face from the sun of a warm
climate, leaving the sea-breeze, that was just beginning
to blow, to fan her blooming and sunny cheeks.
“It is better than the brig. The worst piece of land
is better than the brig.”
“Do not say that, Rose—not if it’s a desert
island, dear; and this is desperately like a desert
island; I am almost sorry I ventured on it.”
“It will not be deserted by us, aunty, until we
shall see occasion to do so. Why not endeavor to
get on board of yonder ship, and return to New
York in her; or at least induce her captain to put us
ashore somewhere near this, and go home by land.
Your health never seemed better than it is at this
moment; and as for mine, I do assure you, aunty,
dear, I am as perfectly well as I ever was in
my life.”
“All from this voyage. I knew it would set you
up, and am delighted to hear you say as much.
Biddy and I were talking of you this very morning,
my child, and we both agreed that you were getting
to be yourself again. Oh, ships, and brigs, and
schooners, full-jigger or half-jigger, for pulmonary
complaints, say I! My poor Mr. Budd always maintained
that the ocean was the cure for all diseases,
and I determined that to sea you should go, the moment
I became alarmed for your health.”
The good widow loved Rose most tenderly, and
she was obliged to use her handkerchief to dry the
tears from her eyes as she concluded. Those tears
sprung equally from a past feeling of apprehension,
and a present feeling of gratitude. Rose saw this,
and she took a seat at her aunt’s side, touched herself,
as she never failed to be on similar occasions,
with this proof of her relative’s affection. At that
moment even Harry Mulford would have lost a
good deal in her kind feelings toward him, had he so
much as smiled at one of the widow’s nautical absurdities.
At such times, Rose seemed to be her
aunt’s guardian and protectress, instead of reversing
the relations, and she entirely forgot herself the
many reasons which existed for wishing that she
had been placed in childhood, under the care of one
better qualified than the well-meaning relict of her
uncle, for the performance of her duties.
“Thank you, aunty—thank’ee, dear aunty,” said
Rose, kissing the widow affectionately. “I know
that you mean the best for me, though you are a
little mistaken in supposing me ill. I do assure
you, dear,” patting her aunt’s cheek, as if she herself
had been merely a playful child, “I never was
better; and if I have been pulmonary, I am entirely
cured, and am now ready to return home.”
“God be praised for this, Rosy. Under His
divine providence, it is all owing to the sea. If
you really feel so much restored, however, I do not
wish to keep you a moment longer on a ship’s board
than is necessary. We owe something to Capt.
Spike’s care, and cannot quit him too unceremoniously;
but as soon as he is at liberty to go into
a harbor, I will engage him to do so, and we can
return home by land—unless, indeed, the brig intends
to make the home voyage herself.”
“I do not like this brig, aunty, and now we are
out of her, I wish we could keep out of her. Nor
do I like your Capt. Spike, who seems to me any
thing but an agreeable gentleman.”
“That’s because you aren’t accustomed to the
sea. My poor Mr. Budd had his ways, like all the
rest of them; it takes time to get acquainted with
them. All sailors are so.”
Rose bent her face involuntarily, but so low as
to conceal the increasing brightness of her native
bloom, as she answered,
“Harry Mulford is not so, aunty, dear—and he is
every inch a sailor.”
“Well, there is a difference, I must acknowledge,
though I dare say Harry will grow every day more
and more like all the rest of them. In the end, he
will resemble Capt. Spike.”
“Never,” said Rose, firmly.
“You can’t tell, child. I never saw your uncle
when he was Harry’s age, for I wasn’t born till he
was thirty, but often and often has he pointed out to
me some slender, genteel youth, and say, ‘just such
a lad was I at twenty,’ though nothing could be less
alike, at the moment he was speaking, than they two.
We all change with our years. Now I was once
as slender, and almost—not quite, Rosy, for few
there are that be—but almost as handsome as you
yourself.”
“Yes, aunty, I’ve heard that before,” said Rose,
springing up, in order to change the discourse; “but
Harry Mulford will never become like Stephen
Spike. I wish we had never known the man,
dearest aunty.”
“It was all your own doings, child. He’s a cousin
of your most intimate friend, and she brought him to
the house; and one couldn’t offend Mary Mulford,
by telling her we didn’t like her cousin.”
Rose seemed vexed, and she kept her little foot
in motion, patting the sail that formed the carpet,
as girls will pat the ground with their feet when
vexed. This gleam of displeasure was soon over,
however, and her countenance became as placid
as the clear, blue sky that formed the vault of the
heavens above her head. As if to atone for the
passing rebellion of her feelings, she threw her arms
around her aunt’s neck; after which she walked
away, along the beach, ruminating on her present
situation, and of the best means of extricating their
party from the power of Spike.
It requires great familiarity with vessels and the
seas, for one to think, read, and pursue the customary
train of reasoning on board a ship that one has
practiced ashore. Rose had felt this embarrassment
during the past month, for the whole of which time
she had scarcely been in a condition to act up to her
true character, suffering her energies, and in some
measure, her faculties to be drawn into the vortex
produced by the bustle, novelties, and scenes of the
vessel and the ocean. But, now she was once
more on the land, diminutive and naked as was the
islet that composed her present world, and she
found leisure and solitude for reflection and decision.
She was not ignorant of the nature of a vessel of
war, or of the impropriety of unprotected females
placing themselves on board of one; but gentlemen
of character, like the officers of the ship in sight,
could hardly be wanting in the feelings of their
caste; and any thing was better than to return
voluntarily within the power of Spike. She determined
within her own mind that voluntarily
she would not. We shall leave this young girl,
slowly wandering along the beach of her islet,
musing on matters like these, while we return to the
vessels and the mariners.
A good breeze had come in over the reef from
the gulf, throwing the sloop-of-war dead to leeward
of the brigantine’s anchorage. This was the reason
that the former had closed so slowly. Still the distance
between the vessels was so small, that a swift
cruiser, like the ship of war, would soon have been
alongside of the wreckers, but for the intervening
islets and the intricacies of their channels. She had
made sail on the wind, however, and was evidently
disposed to come as near to the danger as her lead
showed would be safe, even if she did not venture
among them.
Spike noted all these movements, and he took his
measures accordingly. The pumping and bailing
had been going on since the appearance of light,
and the flour had been quite half removed from the
schooner’s hold. That vessel consequently floated
with sufficient buoyancy, and no further anxiety was
felt on account of her sinking. Still a great deal of
water remained in her, the cabin itself being nearly
half full. Spike’s object was to reduce this water
sufficiently to enable him to descend into the state-room
which Señor Montefalderon had occupied, and
bring away the doubloons that alone kept him in
the vicinity of so ticklish a neighbor as the Poughkeepsie.
Escape was easy enough to one who
knew the passages of the reef and islets; more
especially since the wind had so fortunately brought
the cruiser to leeward. Spike most apprehended a
movement upon him in the boats, and he had almost
made up his mind, should such an enterprise be
attempted, to try his hand in beating it off with his
guns. A good deal of uncertainty on the subject of
Mulford’s consenting to resist the recognized authorities
of the country, as well as some doubts of a
similar nature in reference to two or three of the best
of the foremast hands, alone left him at all in doubt
as to the expediency of such a course. As no boats
were lowered from the cruiser, however, the necessity
of resorting to so desperate a measure did not
occur, and the duty of lightening the schooner had
proceeded without interruption. As soon as the
boatswain came off from the islet, he and the men
with him were directed to take the hands and lift the
anchors, of which it will be remembered the Swash
had several down. Even Mulford was shortly after
set at work on the same duty; and these expert and
ready seamen soon had the brig clear of the ground.
As the schooner was anchored, and floated without
assistance, the Swash rode by her.
Such was the state of things when the men turned
to, after having had their dinners. By this time, the
sloop-of-war was within half a league of the bay, her
progress having been materially retarded by the set
of the current, which was directly against her.
Spike saw that a collision of some sort or other must
speedily occur, and he determined to take the boatswain
with him, and descend into the cabin of the
schooner in quest of the gold. The boatswain was
summoned, and Señor Montefalderon repeated in
this man’s presence, the instructions that he thought
it necessary for the adventurers to follow, in order
to secure the prize. Knowing how little locks would
avail on board a vessel, were the men disposed to
rob him, that gentleman had trusted more to secreting
his treasure, than to securing it in the more ordinary
way. When the story had again been told, Spike
and his boatswain went on board the schooner, and,
undressing, they prepared to descend into the cabin.
The captain paused a single instant to take a look
at the sloop-of-war, and to examine the state of the
weather. It is probable some new impression was
made on him by this inquiry, for, hailing Mulford,
he ordered him to loosen the sails, and to sheet
home, and hoist the foretopsail. In a word, to
“see all ready to cast off, and make sail on the brig
at the shortest notice.” With this command he
disappeared by the schooner’s companion-way.
Spike and his companion found the water in the
cabin very much deeper than they had supposed.
With a view to comfort, the cabin-floor had been
sunk much lower than is usual on board American
vessels, and this brought the water up nearly to the
arm-pits of two men as short as our captain and his
sturdy little boatswain. The former grumbled a
good deal, when he ascertained the fact, and said
something about the mate’s being better fitted to
make a search in such a place, but concluding with
the remark, that “the man who wants ticklish duty
well done, must see to it himself.”
The gold-hunters groped their way cautiously
about the cabin for some time, feeling for a drawer,
in which they had been told they should find the
key of Señor Montefalderon’s state-room door. In
this Spike himself finally succeeded, he being much
better acquainted with cabins and their fixtures,
than the boatswain.
“Here it is, Ben,” said the captain, “now for a
dive among the Don’s val’ables. Should you pick
up any thing worth speaking of, you can condemn it
for salvage, as I mean to cast off, and quit the wrack
the moment we’ve made sure of the doubloons.”
“And what will become of all the black flour
that is lying about, sir?” asked the boatswain with
a grin.
“It may take care of itself. My agreement will
be up as soon as the doubloons are found. If the
Don will come down handsomely with his share of
what will be left, I may be bought to put the kegs
we have in the brig ashore for him somewhere in
Mexico; but my wish is to get out of the neighborhood
of that bloody sloop-of-war, as soon as possible.”
“She makes but slow headway ag’in the current,
sir; but a body would think she might send in her
boats.”
“The boats might be glad to get back again,”
muttered Spike. “Ay, here is the door unlocked,
and we can now fish for the money.”
Some object had rolled against the state-room
door, when the vessel was capsized, and there was
a good deal of difficulty in forcing it open. They
succeeded at last, and Spike led the way by wading
into the small apartment. Here they began to feel
about beneath the water, and by a very insufficient
light, in quest of the hidden treasure. Spike and
his boatswain differed as to the place which had
just been described to them, as men will differ even
in the account of events that pass directly before
their eyes. While thus employed, the report of a
heavy gun came through the doors of the cabin,
penetrating to the recess in which they were thus
employed.
“Ay, that’s the beginning of it!” exclaimed Spike.
“I wonder that the fool has put it off so long.”
“That gun was a heavy fellow, Capt. Spike,”
returned the boatswain; “and it sounded in my
ears as if ’twas shotted.”
“Ay, ay, I dare say you’re right enough in both
opinions. They put such guns on board their
sloops-of-war, now-a-days, as a fellow used to find
in the lower batteries of a two-decker only in old
times; and as for shot, why Uncle Sam pays, and
they think it cheaper to fire one out of a gun, than to
take the trouble of drawing it.”
“I believe here’s one of the bags, Capt. Spike,”
said the boatswain, making a dip, and coming up
with one-half of the desired treasure in his fist.
“By George, I’ve grabbed him, sir; and the other
bag can’t be far off.”
“Hand that over to me,” said the captain, a little
authoritatively, “and take a dive for the next.”
As the boatswain was obeying this order, a
second gun was heard, and Spike thought that the
noise made by the near passage of a large shot was
audible also. He called out to Ben to “bear a hand,
as the ship seems in ’arnest.” But the head of the
boatswain being under water at the time, the admonition
was thrown away. The fellow soon came
up, however, puffing like a porpoise that has risen
to the surface to blow.
“Hand it over to me at once,” said Spike, stretching
out his unoccupied hand to receive the prize;
“we have little time to lose.”
“That’s sooner said than done, sir,” answered
the boatswain, “a box has driven down upon the
bag, and there’s a tight jam. I got hold of the neck
of the bag, and pulled like a horse, but it wouldn’t
come no how.”
“Show me the place, and let me have a
drag at it. There goes another of his bloody
guns!”
Down went Spike, and the length of time he was
under water, proved how much he was in earnest.
Up he came at length, and with no better luck than
his companion. He had got hold of the bag, satisfied
himself by feeling its outside that it contained the
doubloons, and hauled with all his strength, but it
would not come. The boatswain now proposed to
take a jamming hitch with a rope around the neck
of the bag, which was long enough to admit of such
a fastening, and then to apply their united force.
Spike assented, and the boatswain rummaged about
for a piece of small rope to suit his purpose. At this
moment Mulford appeared at the companion-way
to announce the movements on the part of the sloop-of-war.
He had been purposely tardy, in order to give
the ship as much time as possible; but he saw by the
looks of the men that a longer delay might excite
suspicion.
“Below there,” called out the mate.
“What’s wanting, sir?—what’s wanting, sir?”
answered Spike; “let’s know at once.”
“Have you heard the guns, Capt. Spike?”
“Ay, ay, every grumbler of them. They’ve done
no mischief, I trust, Mr. Mulford?”
“None as yet, sir; though the last shot, and it was
a heavy fellow, passed just above the schooner’s
deck. I’ve the topsail sheeted home and hoisted,
and it’s that which has set them at work. If I
clewed up again, I dare say they’d not fire another
gun.”
“Clew up nothing, sir, but see all clear for casting
off and making sail through the South Pass. What
do you say, Ben, are you ready for a drag?”
“All ready, sir,” answered the boatswain, once
more coming up to breathe. “Now for it, sir; a
steady pull, and a pull all together.”
They did pull, but the hitch slipped, and both
went down beneath the water. In a moment they
were up again, puffing a little, and swearing a great
deal. Just then another gun, and a clatter above
their heads, brought them to a stand.
“What means that, Mr. Mulford?” demanded
Spike, a good deal startled.
“It means that the sloop-of-war has shot away the
head of this schooner’s foremast, sir, and that the
shot has chipp’d a small piece out of the heel of our
maintop-mast—that’s all.”
Though excessively provoked at the mate’s cool
manner of replying, Spike saw that he might lose all
by being too tenacious about securing the remainder
of the doubloons. Pronouncing in very energetic
terms on Uncle Sam, and all his cruisers, an anathema
that we do not care to repeat, he gave a surly
order to Ben to “knock-off,” and abandoned his late
design. In a minute he was on deck and dressed.
“Cast off, lads,” cried the captain, as soon as on
the deck of his own brig again, “and four of you
man that boat. We have got half of your treasure,
Señor Wan, but have been driven from the rest of it,
as you see. There is the bag; when at leisure
we’ll divide it, and give the people their share.
Mr. Mulford, keep the brig in motion, hauling up toward
the South Pass, while I go ashore for the
ladies. I’ll meet you just in the throat of the
passage.”
This said, Spike tumbled into his boat, and was
pulled ashore. As for Mulford, though he cast many
an anxious glance toward the islet, he obeyed his
orders, keeping the brig standing off and on, under
easy canvas, but working her up toward the indicated
passage.
Spike was met by Jack Tier on the beach of the
little island.
“Muster the women at once,” ordered the captain,
“we have no time to lose, for that fellow will
soon be firing broadsides, and his shot now range
half a mile beyond us.”
“You’ll no more move the widow and her maid,
than you’ll move the island,” answered Jack,
laconically.
“Why should I not move them? Do they wish to
stay here and starve?”
“It’s little that they think of that. The sloop-of-war
no sooner begun to fire than down went Mrs.
Budd on the canvas floor of the tent, and set up
just such a screaming as you may remember she
tried her hand at the night the revenue craft fired
into us. Biddy lay down alongside of her mistress,
and at every gun, they just scream as loud as they
can, as if they fancied they might frighten off Uncle
Sam’s men from their duty.”
“Duty!—You little scamp, do you call tormenting
honest traders in this fashion the duty of any man?”
“Well, captain, I’m no ways partic’lar about a
word or two. Their ‘ways,’ if you like that better
than duty, sir.”
“Where’s Rose? Is she down too, screaming
and squalling?”
“No, Capt. Spike, no. Miss Rose is endeavoring,
like a handsome young Christian lady as she is, to
pacify and mollify her aunt and Biddy; and right
down sensible talk does she give them.”
“Then she at least can go aboard the brig,” exclaimed
Spike, with a sudden animation, and an expression
of countenance that Jack did not at all
like.
“I ray-y-ther think she’ll wish to hold on to the
old lady,” observed the steward’s-mate, a little emphatically.
“You be d—d,” cried Spike, fiercely; “when your
opinion is wanted, I’ll ask for it. If I find you’ve
been setting that young woman’s mind ag’in me,
I’ll toss you overboard, as I would the offals of a
shark.”
“Young women’s minds, when they are only
nineteen, get set ag’in boys of fifty-six without much
assistance.”
“Fifty-six yourself.”
“I’m fifty-three—that I’ll own without making
faces at it,” returned Jack, meekly; “and, Stephen
Spike, you logged fifty-six your last birthday,
or a false entry was made.”
This conversation did not take place in the presence
of the boat’s crew, but as the two walked
together toward the tent. They were now in the
verandah, as we have called the shaded opening
in front, and actually within sound of the sweet
voice of Rose, as she exhorted her aunt, in tones a
little louder than usual for her to use, to manifest
more fortitude. Under such circumstances Spike
did not deem it expedient to utter that which was
uppermost in his mind, but, turning short upon Tier,
he directed a tremendous blow directly between his
eyes. Jack saw the danger and dodged, falling
backward to avoid a concussion which he knew
would otherwise be fearful, coming as it would from
one of the best forecastle boxers of his time. The
full force of the blow was avoided, though Jack got
enough of it to knock him down, and to give him a
pair of black eyes. Spike did not stop to pick the
assistant steward up, for another gun was fired at
that very instant, and Mrs. Budd and Biddy renewed
their screams. Instead of pausing to kick the prostrate
Tier, as had just before been his intention, the
captain entered the tent.
A scene that was sufficiently absurd met the view
of Spike, when he found himself in the presence of
the females. The widow had thrown herself on the
ground, and was grasping the cloth of the sail on
which the tent had been erected with both her hands,
and was screaming at the top of her voice. Biddy’s
imitation was not exactly literal, for she had taken
a comfortable seat at the side of her mistress, but
in the way of cries, she rather outdid her principal.
“We must be off,” cried Spike, somewhat unceremoniously.
“The man-of-war is blazing away, as if
she was a firin’ minute-guns over our destruction,
and I can wait no longer.”
“I’ll not stir,” answered the widow—“I can’t stir—I
shall be shot if I go out. No, no, no—I’ll not
stir an inch.”
“We’ll be kilt!—we’ll be kilt!” echoed Biddy,
“and a wicket murther ’twill be in that same man,
war or no war.”
The captain perceived the uselessness of remonstrance
at such a moment, and perhaps he was
secretly rejoiced thereat; but it is certain that he
whipped Rose up under his arm, and walked away
with her, as if she had been a child of two or three
years of age. Rose did not scream, but she struggled
and protested vehemently. It was in vain.
Already the captain had carried her half the distance
between the tent and the boat, in the last of
which, a minute more would have deposited his
victim, when a severe blow on the back of his head
caused Spike to stumble, and he permitted Rose to
escape from his grasp, in the effort to save himself
from a fall. Turning fiercely toward his assailant,
whom he suspected to be one of his boat’s crew, he
saw Tier standing within a few yards, leveling a
pistol at him.
“Advance a step, and you’re a dead man,
villain!” screamed Jack, his voice almost cracked
with rage, and the effort he made to menace.
Spike muttered an oath too revolting for our pages;
but it was such a curse as none but an old salt could
give vent to, and that in the bitterness of his fiercest
wrath. At that critical moment, while Rose was
swelling with indignation and wounded maiden
pride, almost within reach of his arms, looking more
lovely than ever, as the flush of anger deepened
the color in her cheeks, a fresh and deep report from
one of the guns of the sloop-of-war drew all eyes in
her direction. The belching of that gun seemed to
be of double the power of those which had preceded
it, and jets of water, that were twenty feet in height,
marked the course of the formidable missile that
was projected from the piece. The ship had, indeed,
discharged one of those monster-cannons that bear the
name of a distinguished French engineer, but which
should more properly be called by the name of the
ingenious officer who is at the head of our own
ordnance, as they came originally from his inventive
faculties, though somewhat improved by their European
adopter. Spike suspected the truth, for he had
heard of these “Pazans,” as he called them, and
he watched the booming, leaping progress of the
eight-inch shell that this gun threw, with the apprehension
that unknown danger is apt to excite. As
jet succeeded jet, each rising nearer and nearer to
his brig, the interval of time between them seeming
fearfully to diminish, he muttered oath upon oath.
The last leap that the shell made on the water was
at about a quarter of a mile’s distance of the islet on
which his people had deposited at least a hundred
and fifty barrels of his spurious flour, thence it flew,
as it might be without an effort, with a grand and
stately bound into the very centre of the barrels,
exploding at the moment it struck. All saw the
scattering of flour, which was instantly succeeded
by the heavy though slightly straggling explosion of
all the powder on the island. A hundred kegs were
lighted, as it might be, in a common flash, and a
cloud of white smoke poured out and concealed the
whole islet, and all near it.
Rose stood confounded, nor was Jack Tier in a
much better state of mind, though he still kept
the pistol leveled, and menaced Spike. But the
last was no longer dangerous to any there. He recollected
that piles of the barrels encumbered the
decks of his vessel, and he rushed to the boat, nearly
frantic with haste, ordering the men to pull for their
lives. In less than five minutes he was alongside,
and on the deck of the Swash—his first order being
to—“Tumble every barrel of this bloody powder
into the sea, men. Over with it, Mr. Mulford, clear
away the midship ports, and launch as much as you
can through them.”
Remonstrance on the part of Señor Montefalderon
would have been useless, had he been disposed to
make it; but, sooth to say, he was as ready to get
rid of the powder as any there, after the specimen
he had just witnessed of the power of a Paixhan
gun.
Thus it is ever with men. Had two or three
of those shells been first thrown without effect,
as might very well have happened under the circumstances,
none there would have cared for the
risk they were running; but the chance explosion
which had occurred, presented so vivid a picture
of the danger, dormant and remote as it really was,
as to throw the entire crew of the Swash into a
frenzy of exertion.
Nor was the vessel at all free from danger. On
the contrary, she ran very serious risk of being destroyed,
and in some degree, in the very manner
apprehended. Perceiving that Spike was luffing
up through one of the passages nearest the reef,
which would carry him clear of the group, a long
distance to windward of the point where he could
only effect the same object, the commander of the
sloop-of-war opened his fire in good earnest, hoping
to shoot away something material on board the
Swash, before she could get beyond the reach of his
shot. The courses steered by the two vessels, just
at that moment, favored such an attempt, though
they made it necessarily very short lived. While
the Swash was near the wind, the sloop-of-war was
obliged to run off to avoid islets ahead of her, a circumstance
which, while it brought the brig square
with the ship’s broadside, compelled the latter to
steer on a diverging line to the course of her chase.
It was in consequence of these facts, that the sloop-of-war
now opened in earnest and was soon canopied
in the smoke of her own fire.
Great and important changes, as has been already
mentioned, have been made in the armaments of
all the smaller cruisers within the last few years.
Half a generation since, a ship of the rate—we do
not say of the size—of the vessel which was in
chase of Spike and his craft, would not have had it
in her power to molest an enemy at the distance
these two vessels were now apart. But recent improvements
have made ships of this nominal force
formidable at nearly a league’s distance; more
especially by means of their Paixhans and their
shells.
For some little time the range carried the shot
directly over the islet of the tent, Jack Tier and
Rose, both of whom were watching all that passed
with intense interest, standing in the open air the
whole time, seemingly with no concern for themselves,
so absorbed was each, notwithstanding all
that had passed, in the safety of the brig. As for
Rose, she thought only of Harry Mulford, and of the
danger he was in by those fearful explosions of the
shells. Her quick intellect comprehended the peculiar
nature of the risk that was incurred by having
the flour-barrels on deck, and she could not but see
the manner in which Spike and his men were
tumbling them into the water, as the quickest manner
of getting rid of them. After what had just
passed between Jack Tier and his commander,
it might not be so easy to account for his manifest,
nay, intense interest in the escape of the Swash.
This was apparent by his troubled countenance, by
his exclamations, and occasionally by his openly
expressed wishes for her safety. Perhaps it was no
more than the interest the seaman is so apt to feel
in the craft in which he has long sailed, and which
to him has been a home, and of which Mulford exhibited
so much, in his struggles between feeling and
conscience—between a true and a false duty.
As for Spike and his people, we have already
mentioned their efforts to get rid of the powder.
Shell after shell exploded, though none very near
the brig, the ship working her guns as if in action.
At length the officers of the sloop-of-war detected a
source of error in their aim, that is of very common
occurrence in sea-gunnery. Their shot had been
thrown to ricochet, quartering a low, but very regular
succession of little waves. Each shot striking
the water at an acute angle to its agitated surface,
was deflected from a straight line, and described a
regular curve toward the end of its career; or, it
might be truer to say, an irregular curvature, for
the deflection increased as the momentum of the
missile diminished.
No sooner did the commanding officer of the
sloop-of-war discover this fact, and it was easy to
trace the course of the shots by the jets of water
they cast into the air, and to see as well as to hear
the explosions of the shells, than he ordered the guns
pointed more to windward, as a means of counteracting
the departure from the straight lines. This
expedient succeeded in part, the solid shot falling
much nearer to the brig the moment the practice
was resorted to. No shell was fired for some little
time after the new order was issued, and Spike and
his people began to hope these terrific missiles had
ceased their annoyance. The men cheered, finding
their voices for the first time since the danger had
seemed so imminent, and Spike was heard animating
them to their duty. As for Mulford, he was
on the coach-house deck, working the brig, the captain
having confided to him that delicate duty, the
highest proof he could furnish of confidence in his
seamanship. The handsome young mate had just
made a half-board, in the neatest manner, shoving
the brig by its means through a most difficult part
of the passage, and had got her handsomely filled
again on the same tack, looking right out into open
water, by a channel through which she could now
stand on a very easy bowline. Every thing seemed
propitious, and the sloop-of-war’s solid shot began to
drop into the water, a hundred yards short of the
brig. In this state of things one of the Paixhans
belched forth its angry flame and sullen roar again.
There was no mistaking the gun. Then came its
mass of iron, a globe that would have weighed just
sixty-eight pounds, had not sufficient metal been
left out of its interior to leave a cavity to contain a
single pound of powder. Its course, as usual, was
to be marked by its path along the sea, as it bounded
half a mile at a time, from wave to wave. Spike
saw by its undeviating course that this shell was
booming terrifically toward his brig, and a cry to
“look out for the shell,” caused the work to be suspended.
That shell struck the water for the last
time, within two hundred yards of the brig, rose
dark and menacing in its furious leap, but exploded
at the next instant. The fragments of the iron were
scattered on each side, and ahead. Of the last, three
or four fell into the water so near the vessel as to
cast their spray on her decks.
“Overboard with the rest of the powder!” shouted
Spike. “Keep the brig off a little, Mr. Mulford—keep
her off, sir; you luff too much, sir.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” answered the mate. “Keep her
off, it is.”
“There comes the other shell!” cried Ben, but
the men did not quit their toil to gaze this time.
Each seaman worked as if life and death depended
on his single exertions. Spike alone watched the
course of the missile. On it came, booming and
hurtling through the air, tossing high the jets, at each
leap it made from the surface, striking the water
for its last bound, seemingly in a line with the shell
that had just preceded it. From that spot it made
its final leap. Every hand in the brig was stayed
and every eye was raised as the rushing tempest
was heard advancing. The mass went muttering
directly between the masts of the Swash. It had
scarcely seemed to go by when the fierce flash of
fire and the sharp explosion followed. Happily for
those in the brig, the projectile force given by the
gun carried the fragments from them, as in the other
instance it had brought them forward; else would
few have escaped mutilation, or death, among their
crew.
The flashing of fire so near the barrels of powder
that still remained on their deck, caused the frantic
efforts to be renewed, and barrel after barrel was
tumbled overboard, amid the shouts that were now
raised to animate the people to their duty.
“Luff, Mr. Mulford—luff you may, sir,” cried
Spike.
No answer was given.
“D’ye hear there, Mr. Mulford?—it is luff you
may, sir.”
“Mr. Mulford is not aft, sir,” called out the man
at the helm—“but luff it is, sir.”
“Mr. Mulford not aft! Where’s the mate, man?
Tell him he is wanted.”
No Mulford was to be found! A call passed
round the decks, was sent below, and echoed
through the entire brig, but no sign or tidings could
be had of the handsome mate. At that exciting
moment the sloop-of-war seemed to cease her firing,
and appeared to be securing her guns.
[To be continued.
———
BY ALICE G. LEE.
———
A sister’s quiet love
Stirs my heart for thee,
Ask me for none other,
For it paineth me.
Schiller’s Ballads.
I can but listen to thy words in sorrow—
Words that are poured from a full, bursting heart.
Thou couldst not thus the form of passion borrow;
I know thou dost not act a studied part.
For even now thine eyes, so true and earnest,
Are seeking mine with such a pleading look;
And as that searching gaze on me thou turnest,
I know that falsehood thou couldst never brook.
Yet I could almost wish deceit were dwelling
Within the soul laid bare before me now,
That false, false words within thy breast were swelling,
That I might read it on thy pallid brow.
Or rather, that thou deemedst true and stainless
The vows that have just trembled to mine ear;
If then thy love could pass away all painless,
And leave thee much of hope for gloomy fear.
I did not dream that love so high and holy
Was nursed so long in silence; and for me!
My heart is far too humble, far too lowly,
To think that such a passion e’er could be.
I read within thine eyes the calm affection
A brother feels for one who, wild and weak,
Looks up to a strong arm for kind protection;
No other language did they seem to speak.
And when my hand was warmly grasped at meeting,
An answering pressure to thine own it gave.
I did not mark thy pulse was wildly beating;
How could I think from hopeless love to save?
And till I met this eve thy look so thrilling,
My spirit had not been by sorrow stirred;
But now with tears my heavy eyes are filling,
Tears, for the hopes which I this hour have heard.
For all the dreams thy soul so long hath cherished,
’Tis mine to bid them vanish at a sound,
—Would, rather, that my own high hopes had perished!
The spell of love not yet my heart has bound,
And ’twould be sin to claim thy high devotion,
When I could not return one half its worth;
For calmest friendship is the sole emotion
That for thee, brother! in that heart hath birth.
[PRIZE POEM—for which the Premium of $150 was awarded by the Committee.]
———
BY JESSE E. DOW.
———
————————For him the hand
Of Autumn tinges every fertile branch
With blooming gold and blushes like the morn.
Akenside.
Season of fading glory! Oh how sad,
When through the woodland moans thy fitful gale,
Shaking the ripen’d nuts from loftiest bough,
And down the forest side and sylvan road
Whirling the yellow leaves with rustling sound.
Mountain and vale, and mead, and pasture wild,
Have quickly changed their robes of deepest green;
The summer flowers are withered, save a few
Pale tremblers by the sunny cottage door,
That linger, relics of the roseate band,
Till icy winter, wandering from the pole,
Sings their sad death-song on the snowy hills.
Though not a cloud appears to fleck the sky,
The sun at evening shines with tempered heat,
The solitary flicker bores the tree—
The carpenter of birds; and in the path,
The deadly rattlesnake, with flattened head,
And tongue of crimson darting from his mouth,
Watches the idle bird that marks his form,
Till the charmed victim, with affrighted cries,
Drops on his fangs, the vile seducer’s prey.
The hunter takes his way amid the woods,
Or by the ocean side, when far away
The wave that roll’d upon the beach has gone,
To lave a thousand isles of beauty ere
It breaks again in thunder on that shore.
The well-trained setter through the covert seeks
The bird the sportsman’s fancy prizes o’er
The feathered songsters of the woodland wild;
The covey starts, and soon the murd’rous aim
Brings down the plover, or the woodcock dun,
Or mottled pheasant, that puts trust in man,
And finds, as all have found, the trust abused.
On the brown stump the sprightly squirrel sits,
Filling his striped pouch with ripened grain,
While in the thicket near the rabbit glides,
And as his foot falls on the withered leaves,
A rustling sound in the dim woods is heard,
Rousing the chewitt and the piping jay,
And startling from the dead pines naked top,
With hoarsest cry, the reconnoitering crow.
The meadow-lark, with yellow breast, alights
On the old field, and sings her favorite strain—
A clear harmonious song. The Hunter Boy—
A little urchin stealing by his side,
With freckled face, lit up with roguish smiles,
And eyes that twinkled perfect gems of fun—
Armed with an ancient musket, that did speak
The voice of death on wars victorious fields,
Creeps down the garden wall and nears her seat,
Then, casting down his flopping hat of straw,
Rests fearless o’er his trembling playmate’s back,
Takes deadly aim, and shuts both eyes, and fires!
Loud ring the hills, and vales, and plains around,
The border grove is filled with sulphurous smoke,
The cat-bird cries “for shame!” and darts away
Before her leafy resting-place is seen;
And when the cloud of death has floated on,
The victim bird is found a gory thing,
While the proud hero of this manly sport,
Struts down the lane like Cæsar entering Rome.
The patient Angler threads the winding brook,
Tempting the dainty trout with gilded bait;
And ever and anon, as fleecy clouds
Pass o’er the sun, the fish voracious darts
From the cool shadows of some mossy bank,
Swallows the bait with one convulsive act,
And learns too late that death was at the feast;
While the glad sportsman feels the sudden jerk,
And plays his victim with extended line,
Swiftly he darts, and through the glittering rings
The silken line is drawn with ringing sound,
Till wearied out with struggling that but serves
To drive the barbed weapon deeper still,
He seeks his quiet shelter ’neath the bank,
And thence in triumph to the shore is borne,
A prize that well rewards a day of toil.
Along the hills the school-boy flies his kite,
Shoots the smooth marble o’er the studded ring,
Or o’er the commons with a bound and shout,
Beats the soft ball for one well skilled to catch.
Health crowns the joyful exercise, and night
Finds its tired votaries trained for quiet sleep.
Bearing his hazel wand of curious form,
The searcher after earth’s deep spring goes forth,
Handling his mystic prongs as Merlin taught,
Or later follower of the magic school.
Now over hill-tops, stony as the mounds
The Indian warriors raise above their slain,
Then down in valleys, where the sun ne’er shines,
Fringed round with sylvan borders dense and rank,
He trudges, looking wiser than the one
Who passes o’er the busy brain his hand,
And wraps the senses in a sleep profound.
At length, above a vale where willows bend,
And grass grows greenest in the waning year,
His curious tell-tale turns toward the earth;
He stops, and with a shout of joy proclaims
The long sought spot where living water runs,
And where the well may sink, nor sink in vain.
The forest now awakes, while stroke on stroke
Falls on the hoary monarch of the wood,
Now shaking ’mid the scions that have towered
Beneath its shade for years. At length it falls,
And with terrific crash, bears down to earth
Each minor object that obstructs its way—
Down on the verdant carpet that has spread
Beneath its branches in the summer heat,
Behold it lying like a warrior stern,
Who, having grappled in the deadly fray,
Has sank amid his fellows in his pride—
But not to die, tho’ robbed of all its green,
Still shall it in the lofty steeple live,
Or in the battle-ship, whose thunder speaks
The voice of freedom on her ocean way.
The sail that wafts the admiral in his pride,
By it is held to catch the willing gale,
And on its giant breast the fabric rests,
That bears the sturdy warriors of the deep,
And floats them on in sunshine and in storm.
Its branches to the cottage-hearth are given,
And by the fire that feeds and grows on them
The chilly air is changed to breath of spring.
Food, shelter, comfort, from its fall proceed,
And thousands bless the hand that laid thee low.
Above the purple peaks that fringe the west
The swollen clouds obey the tempest’s call,
And rear their domes and battlements of mist,
With turrets, barbicans, and spires of gold;
Now changing into shapes of demon form,
With wreaths of lightning twining round their brows,
And now, like waves of darkness from old night,
Scowling and breaking on the misty hills.
A drowsy stillness steals along the plain,
The leaves are motionless on every tree,
The twitt’ring swallow glides along the ground,
While the more cautious pigeon seeks the eaves.
The geese that o’er the green so stately stalked,
Take flight toward the west with heavy wing,
And scream a welcome to the coming rain.
The cattle from the hills come early home,
And from the fallow ground the lab’rer turns,
Long ere the hour of sunset, with an eye
That reads the secrets of the heavens as well
As though it opened first in Chaldea’s land.
Along the road the mimic whirlwind runs,
And with its unseen fingers lifts the dust;
The town-returning wagon faster moves,
And down the hill, and o’er the sandy plain,
The village Jehu makes the coach-wheel spin;
And while the plover whistles on the moor,
The stage-horn breaks upon the startled ear.
But, hark! the storm-drum beats the tempest charge;
The groaning forest feels its rushing breath,
And bends its yellow head to let it pass;
The vivid lightning takes its errant way,
While echoing, ’mid the sparkling balls of hail,
Is heard the sound of its descending feet
In thunder. The hail drops fearfully around,
Strips the stout trees, and beats to earth the grain,
Wounds man and beast amid the open fields,
And strikes with deadly blow the wild fowl down.
Flash after flash lights up the dreaded scene,
And answering thunder speaks from every cloud;
While the deep caverns of the ocean swell
Their mystic voices in the chorus grand.
Men sit in silence now with anxious looks,
While timid mothers seek their downy beds,
And press their wailing infants to their breasts.
From her low lattice by the cottage-door,
The bolder housewife marks the pelting storm;
Sees the adventurous traveler onward go,
Seeking his distant hamlet, ere the night
Adds tenfold horrors to the dismal scene.
Swiftly the steed bounds o’er the woodland plain,
While hope beams brightly from the rider’s eye,
When lo! a crimson flash, with peal sublime,
Instant as thought, and terrible as death,
Around her bursts. Blinded, she starts, then seeing,
Looks again. The horse and his bold rider lie
Hushed in the marble-sleep that lasts through time.
And while the wind howls mournfully around,
The forest owns the baptism of fire.
The onset o’er, in mingled fire and hail,
Behold the rain in sweet profusion falls.
The warm shower melts the crystal drops that hide
The earth’s brown bosom; and the foaming brooks
Go singing down the hills, and through the vales,
Like happy children when their task is done.
A few bright flashes, and hoarse, rattling peals,
And then, amid the broad and crimson glow,
O’er western hills, a golden spot appears,
That spreads and brightens as the tempest wanes,
Like Heaven’s first smile upon the dying’s face.
’Tis gone, the rumbling of its chariot wheels
Dies in the ocean vales where echo sleeps;
While waves that roll’d in music on the shore,
Lashed into angry surges, foam and break
In notes of terror on the rocky lee.
’Tis gone, and on its bosom dark and wild
The bow of God is hung, in colors bright
And beautiful as morning’s blushing tints,
When the ark rested on the mountain top,
And the small remnant of a deluged world,
Looked out upon the wilderness, and wept.
—
Gently the Sabbath breaks upon the hills,
As when the first blest Sabbath marked the course
Of time. The golden sunbeam sleeps upon
The woods. No cloud casts o’er the scene a shade.
The six days’ labor ended, man and beast
Enjoy the season of appointed rest.
The fields are lonely, and the drowsy dells
Scarce catch the whisper of the gentle air;
And now is heard, for over hill and dale,
Up laughing valley, and through whisp’ring glen,
Gladdening the solitary place, and sadder heart,
The sweet-toned Sabbath-bell. Oh, joyful sound!
When from the Indian Isle the storm-tossed bark,
Furls its white pinion by its cradled shore,
And the tir’d sailor, on the giddy yard,
Cent’ring the thoughts of years in one short hour,
Looks to the land, and hears thy melting peal.
At such an hour the grateful heart pours out
Its praise, that upward soars like the blue smoke
Rising from its bright cottage-hearth to heaven;
And from the deep empyrian the ear
Of holy faith an answering note receives,
To still the mourning soul, and dry its tears.
Sweet is the Sabbath to a world of care,
When spring comes blushing with her buds and flowers;
When summer scents the rose, and fills the grain;
When autumn crowns her horn, and binds her sheaves,
And winter keeps his cold watch on the hills.
The wakeful cock from distant farm-yard crows
The passing hour—the miller stops his wheel
To gather headway for the coming task—
And by the turnpike-gate the loaded team,
With bending necks, stand panting, while beneath
The rustic shade the careless teamster waits—
With long-lashed whip, and frock of linsey-wool,
And hat of undyed felt cocked o’er his eye—
There draining to the dregs his foaming gourd,
Stands in his brogans every inch a King.
Approach him, sage professor, as you list,
With question subtil on a point abstruse:
Or with a query as to simple things—
Physics or metaphysics, old or new,
Law, written or unwritten, good or bad,
Logic, domestic or of foreign growth,
Knowledge, too deep to know and never known,
Or sluggish faith, that takes a teeming age
Of miracles, to make one soul believe;
Questions political, that sage to sage
Have past for centuries on, as truants wild
Toss prickly burs, for their unthinking mates
To catch, by moonlight, in the autumnal woods;
Talk of creation, or the Chinese wall,
Wander o’er Athen’s hill or sumac knoll,
Drink at Castalia’s fount or Jasper’s Spring,
And he is there to answer and confound.
Nature’s philosopher! untaught by schools,
Who knows, and can explain in one short hour,
More than the wide world knew in Plato’s day.
—
And there the blacksmith by his anvil stands—
Well may you mark his tall and robust form,
His forehead full, where intellect may dwell,
And eye that glances like the flying sparks
When the red bar comes dazzling from the forge.
All day his hammer works his iron will,
The reaper’s sickle and the crooked scythe
The ponderous tire that binds the wagon-wheel,
And the small rivet of the schoolboy’s toy,
Come at his bidding from the metal crude. The patient ox
Waits for his iron shoes beside his door,
And the gay steed that bounds along the course
Neighs merrier when he plates his hoofs with steel;
The temple door on his stout hinges turns,
And in the vault of Mammon rests secure
The treasure guarded by his master-key.
Day after day he toils, as seldom toil
The slaves that drag their lazy length along—
Sleeping at noon that they may dance at night—
In the plantations of the sunny South;
Yet he unmurmuring bears the laborer’s curse,
To share his joys and roam the golden fields,
Erect in form and intellect—a man!
But when the evening comes with cooling breath,
Bringing the hour for labor’s sweet repose,
He clears his brow from every mark of toil,
And seeks his cottage by the village green;
There, having ate in peace his frugal meal,
He turns his mind, insatiate, to his books:
And, by the aid of Learning’s golden key,
Holds sweet communion with the ages past.
Behold! the scholar now in honest pride!
Around him sleep the mystic tomes of years,
Books that the western world ne’er saw before—
The manuscripts of monks, ere printing gave
The world a channel to a sea of thought,
Where all might sail, and drink in raptures in
The spirit-waters, sparkling from their founts.
His tongue can speak more languages than fell
From human lips at Babel’s overthrow;
Nor secret thing, to mortal spirit known,
Is hidden from his penetrating eye.
Versed in the deepest mysteries of the schools,
With memory stored with all the mind e’er grasped,
With talents rarely willed by Heaven to one,
And sympathetic heart that beats for all,
Nor knows an outcast at its feast of love,
Burritt now lives, the wonder of mankind.
Rabbis and sage professors call him learned,
And to his humble gateway come in crowds,
To hear the page of ancient lore rehearsed,
And catch the jewel-thoughts that fall from him
Who sits amid the learned a self-taught man.
—
In the dun forest, far away from noise
Of traveled road, beneath the giant trees,
Whose branches form a lofty canopy
O’er a great circle cleared by willing hands,
Where the gray ash obstructs the serpent’s path,
The happy Christians pitch their tents of prayer.
There naught is heard but soothing woodland sounds,
The tempered roar of distant waterfall,
The fox’s sharp bark, the heathcock’s cheerful crow.
The wildcat’s growl amid the deepest shade,
And the shrill scream of hunger-driven hawk,
As through the openings he pursues his prey.
Amid the tents upon the highest spot,
The preachers’ stand in humble form appears,
And by its side the horn with mellow note,
To give the signal meet for praise and prayer.
There all conditions come with hearts of love,
Married and single, sons and daughters fair,
The emigrants from every templed land;
The Saxon, in his pride of high descent,
The Gaul, with spirit-harp of finer strings,
The Pict, ne’er weaned from his romantic hills,
Where o’er the heather rolls the Highland tongue,
The Swiss, whose home is where his cottage smiles,
The light Italian, gayest of the gay,
And the coarse Hollander, who loves the marsh,
Nor deems a heaven a home without a ditch—
The river seaman of the mighty west,
Rude in their speech, but honest as they’re rude,
The man of cities, and the pioneer,
Whose axe first let the sunlight to the woods,
When nature in her lonely beauty slept
On the wide prairie and the sylvan hill—
The beaver-trapper, from the far-off stream;
The bison-hunter, from the saline lick;
And the wild Indian, in his forest dress,
All gather from their journeyings to keep,
In humble guise, a week of holier time.
And now the horn has echoed wide and shrill,
And the great congregation waits for prayer.
One takes the stand—a man not taught by schools—
In habit plain, with hands embrown’d by toil;
Blunt in his speech, yet reverent withall.
Now, scarcely understood, he lifts his voice
In praise to God. Then as his feelings catch
The inspiration of that hallowed hour,
Soars to a pitch of eloquence sublime,
While the deep woods are vocal with his prayer.
His words, like rain upon the thirsty ground,
Fall on the ear of that great multitude.
Now he describes a Savior’s matchless love—
His high estate, his exile from the throne,
His mocking trial, and his felon death;
The noonday sun in darkness veils its face,
And earthquake voices fill the trembling air,
While the old dead in shrouds, through Salem’s streets,
Go forth a ghostly company again,
Singing the song of Moses and the Lamb,
And making the proud Temple’s arches ring,
With the glad praises of Redeeming Love.
’Tis done! the mighty plan is carried out—
The last great Sacrifice for sin is o’er;
Then from the tomb he rolls the stone away,
And shows a risen Savior and a God!
The different hearers testify his power
In different ways. The truth, like a sharp sword,
Has cleaved its path. The flinty heart is crushed;
And the great deep of sin is broken up.
The old transgressors tremble by the stand—
The young in sin repent to sin no more.
A thousand voices join in one wild prayer,
And shrieks, and groans, and shouts of joy arise,
And Heaven keeps Sabbath o’er the autumn woods.
The painted savage, who amid the crowd
Has stood unmoved for days, awakes to life;
His giant breast in wild commotion heaves,
His heart would speak, nor wait to reach his lips;
He stands and vainly calls to his relief
His savage nature; but, alas! ’tis gone.
Then falling on his face amid the woods
That often echoed to his war-whoop fell,
He casts his weapons at his Savior’s feet,
And lays aside his garments stained with blood.
His voice in accents of his soul now speaks,
His eyes with tears of deep contrition stream,
And from a trembling tongue in transport breaks,
Sweet Alleluia to the King of Kings!
The angel hovering o’er that forest scene,
Bears up the tidings on exulting wing,
And soon from the high pinnacles of bliss,
The Seraph harps in sweetness make response,
Alleluia!
The thrilling song in gentle murmuring falls
Upon the anxious ear, like music heard
On the calm ocean at the midnight hour;
Speaks to the broken heart in whispers sweet,
An dies away amid the forest hum,
Alleluia!
The night has come, and one by one the lights
Go out amid the trees, and the vast multitude
Is hushed in sleep.
—
The harvest moon sails up its cloudless way,
Full round and red—the farmer’s evening friend,
Lengthening the hours of labor, when the hand
Finds more than it can do within the day.
How gently falls its light upon the plains,
The quiet lake, and music-breathing woods;
The wakened bird mistakes it for the dawn,
And in the bush begins her matin song.
A moment rings the solitary strain,
And then no sound is wafted to the ear,
Save the wild whisper of the dying wind,
Or distant foot-fall of some prowling beast.
Sweet voyager of night! whose fairy bark
Sails silently around the dusky earth,
Whose silver lamp in chastened splendor burns,
Trimmed by the hand that fashioned thee so fair,
And sent thee forth on thy eternal way,
The nearest and the brightest to our eyes
Of Heavens innumerable host—sail on
Thy joyous way, in beauty ’mid the stars,
And catch the song of those bright sentinels,
Who watch the outposts on the bounds of time,
Sending in vain their rays to pierce the gloom
Of drear immensity. The lover’s eye—
Whether he grasps the wreck amid the waves,
Or treads in pride the well appointed deck
Of richly freighted galleon; or is doom’d,
Like Selkirk, in his lonely isle, to dwell
More desolate because his ear had heard,
In Scottish valley, the sweet Sabbath bell;
Or chases, with the seamen of the north,
The monster-whale, by Greenland’s sounding shore,
Where crystal icebergs lift their glittering peaks,
And bathe with rainbow hues the snowy vales;
Or robs the otter of his glossy coat,
Where the Oregon sings her endless hymn
To the Pacific’s waters; or gathers
Birds’ nests ’mid the endless summer isles,
Where waves the cocoa-nut and lofty palm
O’er crystal billows, ’mid whose coral groves
The fish of brightest tints in beauty swim—
In health or sickness, joy or sorrow, turns
Inquiringly to thee, and speaks of love—
Love that endures when strength and reason fails.
So the poor idiot on the moonlit hill,
Patting his dog, his last and truest friend,
Looks up with eye of more than usual fire,
And, ’mid his idle chattering, speaks the name
Of one who loved him best in boyhood’s dream.
Thompson, sweet village! throned upon thy hills,
With happy homes, and spires that gleam above
Thy sacred altars, where the fathers taught,
And generations learned the way to God—
How pleasant, with remembrance’s eye, to view
The varied landscape changing autumn spreads
O’er sunny vales that slumber at thy feet;
Where roll the babbling brook and deeper stream,
Winding, like threads of silver tissue, wrought
By Moorish maidens on their robes of green.
Around thee rise a host of smiling towns,
Bearing the names of mightier ones abroad.
There Dudley, glittering on the northern sky,
Stands on her lofty height supremely fair,
While westward, Woodstock with her groves is seen,
In rural beauty blest; and at her feet,
Wrapt in a silver cloud, sweet Pomfret vale,
Spreads its gay bosom, dear to childhood’s hour.
The iron-horse now darts with lightning speed
Through the green valleys that my boyhood knew,
And at each turn the lovely river makes,
At the mere plashing of the wild swan’s wing,
A babbling village rises from the flood;
And there the halls of labor lift their domes
At Mammon’s call, and countless spindles twirl
The snowy thread, that soon is changed to gold;
While far around is heard the dash of wheels,
And the unceasing roar of swollen dams.
The dead leaves dance upon the river’s breast,
With tufts of cotton-waste, and here and there
A golden apple, dropped by careless boy,
Floating along toward the ocean’s flood.
On the grey oak the fisher-bird awaits
The speckled trout, or chaffin, tinged with gold;
While ’neath the rock the swimmer leaves his clothes,
And ’mid the cooling wave in gladness sports
His ivory limbs, nor heeds the near approach
Of roaming bard, or red-cheeked factory girl,
Who climbs the rustic bridge, nor casts an eye
Toward her Leander, naked in the flood.
On such fair maidens no Duennas wait,
To scare young love from answering love away;
No convent-gates are closed to bar her will,
Nor Hotspur brothers, armed with deadly steel,
In secret wait to guard that honor safe,
Which, but for such restraint, had long since fled.
Beyond the swampy meadow, fringed with flags,
The ancient forest waves its gaudy head,
O’er which the eagle takes his lonely way—
The mighty hunter of the upper air.
There, in the mossy dells, where all is still,
Save when uncertain murmurs come and go
Along the solemn arches of the wood—
Like whispers in a lonely lane at dark,
Or soothing hum of home-returning bee—
The boy, delighted, sets his secret snares,
Clearing broad paths amid the yellow leaves,
Where the cock-partridge may strut in pride
At earliest dawn, and find the fatal noose;
There, when the sun is peeping o’er the hills,
Tinging the woodland sea with gorgeous hues,
He goes, with eager step and anxious eye,
Beholds the path obscured, the sapling sprung,
And, ’mid the maple boughs, his mottled prey.
—
The Reaper pauses in the ample field,
Where a rich harvest smiles to bless his toil,
And rests beside the oak, beneath whose shade,
In ages past, the wandering Red Man slept;
There, while the sun poured down his fervent ray,
The happy laborer seeks to quench his thirst,
With crystal water from the lime-stone spring,
Or milk, from prudent housewife’s ample store—
Pure as it came from Nature’s healthy fount;
And while he sits the idle hours away,
He muses o’er his country and her fame,
And dares to claim her empire as his own.
And there, amid the grass, the children play
Around the sun-burnt maidens, as they twine
The bands to bind the golden armfuls tight,
And leave the bristling sheafs, with plenty crowned,
Standing in beauty on the fresh-reap’d hill.
The groaning wagon gathers up the grain
From auburn fields. The yellow sheafs are piled
In ponderous heaps, while one well skilled builds up
The toppling load, and when ’tis finished, sits
On its sere top, crowned with the ripened grain—
The Autumn’s King! And as the reaper’s hale
And rosy children shout for joy, he sings,
With mellow voice, the song of Harvest Home.
The sickle gleams no more amid the fields;
The cradled hills are open to the feet
Of Want’s poor gleaners and the hunter band;
And there the quail walks with her piping brood
Amid the stubble, teaching them to fly.
Amid the orchard, bending ’neath the load
That fair Pomona from her lap has strewn,
The busy husbandmen commence their tasks.
The red-cheeked apple, and the greening pale,
The golden-pippin, and the blue pearmain,
Baldwin and russet, all are toppled down,
And to the air a balmy fragrance give.
And there, the urchins playing all the while,
Select the choicest fruit for future use,
When the long winter night creeps o’er the hill,
And autumn’s golden brow is wrapped in gloom.
The cider-press, beneath the farm-house shade,
Now creaks, as round old Dobbin takes his way,
While from the massive vat the liquid pours,
And in abundant casks ferments and foams.
Hail, generous drink! fair Newark’s honest boast,
The laborer’s beverage in a northern clime,
Where freedom first, in deadly strife was born,
And where her last scarred-follower shall die—
If death to such e’er come.
Oft have I sighed for thee in spicy clime,
Where hung the clustering grape from every bough,
And where the nectar of the gods was free
As Croton-water in old Gotham’s Park.
Untainted with the liquid sin that flows
From the destroyer’s still, thy spirit lifts
The thirsty soul from earth—but not too high,
Nor leaves at morn a flush upon the brow.
An apple caused the first of earth to sin;
But thou, well made, and freed from earthly taint,
Raisest the weary spirit to its tone,
And givest to labor’s cheek the glow of health.
Now, in the rosy morn, the spotted hounds
Before the mounted Huntsmen hie away.
O’er fields and meadows, onward see them go,
Scaling the walls, and trampling down the corn.
And now they penetrate the forest shade,
And from the sylvan dell, and wood-capt hill,
The deep-mouthed bay with wild halloo is heard,
Swelling in cadence to the hunter’s horn.
In her retreat, amid the deepest shade,
Where the long grass is tender, and ne’er fails,
The red-deer hears, and starts, and lists again,
Till louder still the chase’s wild music sounds,
Then down the hill-side to the lake that spreads
Its broad unruffled bosom to the morn,
She takes her course; while on her haunches come
The bellowing pack, like gaunt and hungry wolves.
Now she has gained the stunted alder’s shade,
That line the margin of the waters clear,
And turning quickly round the wave-worn hill,
That towers abruptly o’er the narrow beach,
Dips her light hoofs in the unconscious wave,
And seeks the mountain-pass with lightning speed.
Hid from their sight, the scent in water lost,
The eager pack plunge headlong in the flood;
But soon recalled to duty, ’long the shore
They scour, till one more practiced than the rest,
Stops where the chase her sylvan pathway took,
And bellowing wildly, follows in her track,
With the whole party thundering at his heels.
The wily deer too long has got the start,
And now from distant hill-side sees the foe
Come panting up the dell with weary limb.
A moment only does she look, then turns
And glides in silence down the other side;
And when the Huntsmen gain the lofty height,
The deer is far away—the chase is o’er.
Oh! who can sing the glories of the woods,
When Indian Summer, like a death-smile, rests
On autumn’s sallow cheek too soon to fade.
In ages past, when thou didst gently come,
“With nights of frost, and noons of sultry heat,
When skies were blue as highly tempered steel,
And rivers clear as crystal, and the mist
Upon the mountains hung its silver veil;
When o’er the grass a fairy net-work spread,
And naught was green except the mountain pine,
The willow, and the bullrush by the brook”—
Our fathers feared—for then amid the wilds,
Called by the wampum-belt of varied hue,
The Indian warriors built their council-fire,
And in the war-dance joined with hellish rite,
Till morning broke upon the dusky woods.
Then, at the hour when mortals soundest slept,
And nature was at rest, they sallied forth,
Armed with the hatchet and the scalping-knife,
And trusty rifle, whose report was death.
The sleeping father woke to hear the cry
Of butchered wife, and infant rudely torn
From her clasped arms, to feel the war-club’s power.
One look he gave, and on his silvery head
The hatchet fell, and loosed the flood of life,
Then sinking down in death’s cold senseless sleep,
Added fresh fuel to the crackling flames
That spread around his lonely sylvan cot,
And lit, with hateful glare, the moaning woods.
Next morn the wandering hunter marked the waste,
And found amid the ashes, human bones,
An axe, a child’s steel rattle, and a lock
Of woman’s golden hair, still wet with blood.
—
The sun in mellow light sleeps on the hills,
The lazy river rolls in silence on,
The woods keep Sabbath, till the deep-mouthed bay
Of wandering fox-hound breaks upon the ear;
Or from the top of an old chestnut falls,
The tempting nut the startled squirrel drops,
Parting the fading leaves with pattering sound;
Or on the rotten log beside the stile,
The busy partridge beats her woodland drum.
The frost has tipt the trees with lovelier tints
Than pencil ever gave to forest scene;
There, green and gold in various hues combine,
Spotted with crimson where the maple stands,
And when the sun upon the hoar-frost shines,
The foliage sparkles, as though crystals hung
On every leaf, and trembled in the air.
The eye now penetrates the half-clad trees,
And spies the squirrel in his leafy house,
Or marks upon the limb the wish-ton-wish,
Who rests by day, that he may sweeter sing
His song at night, beside the cottage gate.
The thistle-seed, with wing of silver down,
Floats in the air, and flashes in the sun.
The dusky worm that feasted on the leaf
In the green spring-time, weaves his curious shroud,
And fastening it by thread of minute size,
To the tall poplar swings himself to sleep.
Type of the resurrection! lo, he hangs
Between the mortal and the spirit-land,
Till called by God, through Nature’s changeless laws,
He starts a winged creature clad in light,
With tints of morning blushing on his wings.
The fisher’s boat along the river glides,
Nor leaves a ripple in its shallow wake.
The wild swan sports in Anicosta’s wave,
And deems his shadow his departed mate;
The patient heron, on the wave-washed rock
For hours stands, watching his suspecting prey;
The wild-goose raises heavily to join
The gabbling cohort that is hastening on,
High in the air, to the bright summer-land,
Where the superb magnolia lifts its head.
And scents the gale—a wilderness of flowers.
The hardy ivy climbs the giant tree,
To place green garlands on its withered head;
The wild grape from the lofty walnut hangs
Its purple clusters tempting to the sight;
And by the swampy brook, the sunflower turns
Its golden eye in meekness toward its God;
The deer, from sylvan dell comes out to drink;
The buzzard on the dead tree patient waits,
For the returning tide to line the shore
With food well-suited to his groveling taste;
And o’er the bosom of the widening stream,
The lazy fish-hawk flaps his heavy wing.
—
Old age and childhood mark, with curious eye,
The lonely scene, and pass, with cautious tread,
Down the still pathway of the dying woods.
Now, round the mighty piles of corn they sit,
The aged ones, the young men, and the lads,
With here and there a son of Afric’s clime,
With eye that rolls in undiminished joy,
And mouth that ready waits to swell the laugh,
Or join the merry huskers’ drinking song.
And thus the labor of a week is done,
While wives and daughters, ’neath the farmer’s roof,
Spread out the festive board with viands rich,
And tempting to the eye of one who bears
The sweat of labor on his swarthy brow.
Now, from its yellow shuck, the ripened corn,
In well-filled ears, is drawn—a pleasant sight;
And while the village maidens pass along,
Stopping, where’er their fancy wills, to husk,
Red ears are placed within their anxious palms,
By roguish ones, who hid them for this hour;
And as they draw the crimson emblems forth,
Full many a kiss is printed on the cheek
Of rosy innocence, by lips that ne’er
Such liberty had dared to take before.
The clock strikes twelve, and from his cozy perch
Beside the fattest pullet, lo, the cock
Proclaims the approaching morn with shrillest crow!
The corn is husked, and now they gather round
The board, while lovely maidens wait to serve
With ready hand, the laborers of the eve.
Now from the lips of village sire ascends
The prayer for Heaven’s rich blessing on their food;
Thanks for the pouring out of plenty’s horn,
And gratitude for life and health—nay, more,
For liberty, without which all things else
Were vain. And while he stands with streaming eye,
And hand that palsy oft has clasped in vain,
His trembling accents fall upon the ear,
Like distant music at the close of day.
The service o’er, the merry feast begins,
Then joy runs riot round the sacred chair,
And dignified propriety is gay
As gipsy maiden, with her silver bells
Tinkling around her heels. At length the dawn
Recalls the joyous throng to other scenes;
And soon the last gay visiter has bade
His warm good-by—and the old house is still.
Left all alone, in calm security,
Straight in his oaken-chair of antique form,
Within his hall, the farmer sits and sleeps,
While the fierce house-dog watches at his feet.
Sweet hour of plenteous ease, when care puts off
His wrinkled brow, and charity and love,
The fairest sisters of the heavenly train,
Go hand in hand along the faded walks,
And sit at evening by the cottage door.
There the old soldier, covered o’er with scars,
Limping along unnoticed by the crowd,
Whose liberties were purchased with his blood,
Finds ’neath the whispering elms before the door
A welcome seat; and there the little ones,
Called from their play by watchful Towser’s growl.
And the patched dress that glory gives her sons,
Gather round their sire with mute surprise,
And list to tales of other days, when war,
With iron feet, swept thundering o’er the glade,
And reared his bloody altars on the hills.
And while they listen, lo! the soldier’s face
Grows less terrific, and his tatter’d dress
No longer seems to hide a vagrant’s form.
With stealthy look and silent step, they seek
The festive board, and silently return;
Then, while he wipes from his dim eye a tear,
They fill the old man’s pack with generous food,
Proffer the goblet full to his parched lips,
And play at “hide and seek” around his chair.
The heart of power may coldly beat when they
Who fought for freedom in her darkest hour,
In age and penury, appear to claim
The boon a monarch never yet refused;
But by the hearth-stones of his native land,
Where liberal thoughts and generous feelings dwell,
The valiant soldier ne’er shall find a churl
To bid him trudge, a rude unwelcome guest.
On Salem’s hill the Hebrews’ reign is o’er,
The silver trump of jubilee is still.
Timbrel and harp and soft-toned dulcimer
Have ceased their strains in Sharon’s rosy vale;
The scattered tribes in earth’s remotest bounds
Wander like sheep upon the mountain-side,
And Israel mourns her empire and her God.
The fisher, solitary, dries his net
On the green rock, amid the silver wave,
Where, robed in purple, sat imperial Tyre,
And through the autumn day beholds no sail,
To catch the scented breeze from Cypress Isle.
The hills of Judah, crowned with ruins gray,
Lift their brown summits to the deep blue air,
And cast their cooling shadows on the sea.
Hushed is the shepherd’s lute, the reaper’s shout,
The bleat of flocks, and patriarch’s song of praise,
The Harvester of years has o’er them past,
And hung his reaping-hook in Joseph’s tomb.
But though the trump of jubilee is still,
And Israel’s host in triumph meet no more
By Jacob’s well, or Siloa’s sacred brook;
Yet in the western world, where Freedom rears
Her banner o’er the altar of her God,
And all religions meet in peaceful mood,
At autumn’s close, the wanderers returned
To distant homes, to keep Thanksgiving Day.
Such was the custom of the Pilgrim band,
When first they trod that wild and wintry shore,
And such th’ observance of their sterling sons,
Who, scattered o’er the freeman’s heritage,
Remember their bold ancestry with pride,
And where they tread, make new New England’s bloom.
—
The days grow shorter, and the nights with frost
Creep shivering o’er the landscape’s fading green.
The village stage comes in at later hour,
From city, town, and distant boarding-school
Bringing a host of merry hearts, who seek
The joys of childhood by their native hearths;
And as it pauses at the welcome door
The inmates rush, uncovered, to the stile,
And there, ’mid kisses long and loud, is heard
The mother’s anxious inquiry for health,
The boisterous brother’s rude though hearty hail,
And happy father’s well-timed welcome home.
What joys, what transports centre in the hour
While the old mansion rings with childlike mirth.
—
For days the very atmosphere has teemed
With savory odor from the kitchen flue.
And now the day of praise begins, clear, cold and still.
While yet the sun sails up its morning path
The merry peal from village spire is heard,
And straightway pours the tide of life along,
Gathering fresh numbers from each ivied door,
Changing their greetings warm on every hand,
With those by Mammon or by glory called,
Whose wandering feet have homeward turned again:
And many a speaking eye reveals the tale
Of love long felt, but ne’er before expressed.
The church is still, and maiden modesty
Has smoothed her dress and re-arranged her curl,
Then from the choir the pealing anthem swells
With chorus grand—and voices long unused
To holy song join in the symphony
Of praise.
Prayer long and deep and eloquent ensues,
In which the earth, the nation, and the church,
The righteous and the wicked, rich and poor,
Remembrance find. And then a meet discourse,
Recounting changes of the variant year,
Paying a tribute just to absent worth,
And hanging garlands green on glory’s tomb.
The heart is touched—the mourner’s eye grows dim—
The proud are humbled, and the poor rejoice.
And when the speaker closes, with a charge
To pay due homage to the Mighty One
Who guides Arcturus and his boisterous sons,
Binds the sweet influence of the Pleiades,
And breaks Orion’s broad and sparkling bonds,
All hearts, with one accord, in reverence bow,
And pure thanksgiving peals from every tongue.
The service done, they seek their cheerful hearths
To spend the hallowed day in feasts of love.
The feast is set—and joy’s wild burst is o’er—
The mother’s eye has marked the vacant chair—
The father’s ear has missed his first-born’s step—
And where the church-yard sleeps, so still, they look
With hearts of grief, and eyes suffused with tears.
Evening with smiles and tales has come, and round
The social circle blind-man’s buff is played.
Wisdom and years are straightway laid aside,
And manhood lives its childhood o’er again,
Seeking the golden shadows of the days
Long passed away.
And now the youngest having sought repose,
Friend after friend drops in with cheerful heart;
The merry dance succeeds the merry game,
And the light foot with lighter heart keeps time.
Music is also there, with gentle tone,
Singing the favorite tunes of other days.
Age with its wrinkle, childhood with its smile,
Youth with its hope, and manhood with its care,
Joy blends with high esteem, and admiration
Kindles into love.
The old clock ticks the drowsy hours along—
The midnight comes—the joyous throng disperse—
Full many a head on sleepless pillow lies,
Till wearied out, with thinking o’er the past,
The mind surrenders to the body’s guide
And dreams of fancy dance before the eye.
Blest labor! thou dost fringe the poor man’s lids
With gold: and drive remembrance of his wrongs
Away—hang o’er his drowsy visions scenes
Of pleasantness, where round a cheerful cot
Wind paths of peace. Oh, Night! to him what are
The ills of day, if thou but shelter him
With brooding wing.—
Earth without labor—what a dreary waste!
Sadder to view than Asia’s barren plains
Or Afric’s sea of sand. He that would strike
Thy arm of sinews down, would make the field
A solitude, and crowded mart a den
Of thieves.—
When the moist sickle rests upon its hook,
And the rich stores of earth are gathered in,
The fair is held—a feast of fruits and flowers—
Of art’s fine workmanship and labor’s yield.
From the dark pines that fringe Aroostook’s wave
To the wild chapparal that rudely turns
The martial foot from Rio Bravo’s bank,
From the Atlantic’s many-peopled shore
To the Columbia’s vales of living green,
The joyful mandate rings, and man pours forth
His richest treasures to the gaze of day.
The nation sits in judgment on her arts,
Her choice productions and her fruitful glebes,
And cheers the laborer’s toil with voice of praise.
Thus man is dignified by honest toil,
And the dread curse pronounced in Time’s young spring
Becomes a blessing in its autumn day.
So may the laborer stand amid his race—
Taught that true knowledge elevates the soul,
That the poor carpenter of Galilee
Once worked his task—then in the temple taught—
Then gave redemption to a guilty world—
And then resumed his station by his God!
Now from the well-filled barn, in gusty day,
The flail’s loud beat is heard—a pleasing sound—
And from the chaff the full unspotted grain
Is winnowed by the stripling’s feeble hand.
And while the dust is flying far and wide
The wheat is gathered in, a precious store,
Tempting the factor’s mercenary eye,
And bidding famine with her sickly form
Wander afar from Freedom’s hallowed soil;
The timid quail, with well-fledged brood, draws near,
Her tithe to claim from man’s productive toil,
And barn-yard fowls their rich thanksgivings spend,
Nor dream of days of want in time to come,
When winter o’er the frozen earth shall claim
Her sovereignty with cutting blast and snow.
Autumn departs, and soon on hills of brown,
In storms will break the dark solstitial morn.
The grove has lost its verdure and its song,
And withered leaves, in heaps, are mouldering round.
Keen northern blasts, from Greenland’s gelid wastes,
Wake the dark woods of stormy Labrador,
And o’er Canadian wilds and ocean-lakes,
Down Mississippi’s vales in fury howl.
By Huron’s flood the savage wrapped in furs
Gathers his tent of skins beneath the snow,
And ’mid the smoke, for days, securely waits
For the encrusting rain to plate the drift
With glittering ice, that cracks not at his tread,
Where he may chase the moose, whose hoofs break thro’
And leave upon the trail a track of blood.
The miner on Superior’s pictured cliffs,
Where sings the thunder its eternal hymn,
Waits in his cabin rude for hours of spring,
Giving up pleasure, and e’en health itself,
That he may climb to fortune’s fickle height
Through veins of copper, and up shafts of gold.
The pilgrim’s son, in freedom, builds his cot,
And hails a shadowy old world from the new,
On the Pacific’s main, where blooming hills
Hang o’er the flood, and catch the dying strain
Borne on the waves from India’s coral strand.
The farmer’s boy, long since amid the woods,
Has plucked the hazel and the chestnut brown,
And sharp-ribbed walnut, for his winter store,
Leaving the staining butternut untouched,
For the hoar-frost to peel its ragged shell.
The sheep go wandering o’er the barren plains
In search of welcome food, and where the scythe
Between the pointed stones has passed along,
Crop closer than the crooked blade of man
The sallow loiterers of the autumn field.
The red-breasts, gathered into flocks, no longer pipe
Their sweetest songs beside the cottage door:
And the vast family of sea-birds screech
Their notes of sadness o’er the sounding sea.
The rivers lift their voices, as the rain
From chilly clouds falls on the dreary scene,
And high above their banks in torrents swell,
Sweeping the cottage and the well-filled barn,
The dam, the bridge, and the old ivied mill,
With stacks of grain and implements of man,
In wild confusion onward to the sea.
Sad are the notes of nature—doubly sad,
Where leaping o’er her brown and dizzy height,
With robe of silver and a rainbow crown,
Niagara sings her thunder-hymn to earth’s
Remotest waters—where oft the poet’s eye
Beholds, amid the shades of autumn eve,
The Tuscarora in his phantom bark,
Singing his death-song on the cataract’s brow.
Or where, amid Virginia’s fertile vale,
The Rockbridge in its grandeur towers above
The little stream that runs so far beneath,
That human ear ne’er caught its hoarsest brawl.
There where the Deluge pierced the mountain chain
And sent its wild pent river to the sea,
The storm, with sternest music, calls its clouds,
And through the giant arch remorseless sweeps
Causing dread whirlpools of the misty air.
Autumn departs, and earth in sadness mourns,
And all around is desolate and chill.
Empires have had their autumns, and are lost
Beneath the dead and rustling leaves of time.
Egypt, majestic in her ruin, sleeps
Upon the Nile—the pyramids her history
And her tomb. Idumea, ’mid her cliffs,
Yawns in her gloom, an empty sepulchre.
Tadmor is hid amid the desert sand;
Balbec’s tremendous wall upon the waste,
Shelters the spotted lizard and the owl;
And Babylon, the mighty, is a heap
By the Euphrates. Tyre has been swallowed
By the tideless sea; Greece sits in darkness
On her classic hills, ’mid templed groves,
Her king a Saxon, and her children slaves.
The Muscovite has found a shorter way
To old Byzantium; and the lazy Turk
That loiters there, is but a Turk in name.
Dark Ethiopia knows her bounds no more;
Carthage is but a pasture wild for goats;
Persia now roams the waste in broken hordes;
Imperial Rome, once mistress of the world,
Is but a province, where a mitred priest
Sits in the Cæsar’s chair without his crown;
And the furr’d Russ directs the haughty race
Of Ghengis Khan and fiery Tamerlane.
Ages and kingdoms feel the sickle click,
And bend their heads before the reaper’s tread.
The Earth shall have her autumn, with the stars
That sang in beauty at the birth of Time;
And Death shall have his autumn, for he too
Must die. The Heavens shall have their autumn,
And be rolled back to their ancient nothingness.
And all shall fade, and fall around, and die,
But God, and the vast Hierarchy of souls.
—
Oh, death! when thou dost come with trembling limbs,
Down the brown hills, where waves the ripened grain,
And bear the aged exile home to God,
While autumn’s wailing wind sings Harvest Home.
When health’s bright roses slowly fade away,
As flowers of spring-time breathed on by the frost;
When dire consumption saps the roots of life,
And slow but sure its victims steal along
The shaded path that winds around the tomb;
Or when by burning fever racked and parched,
The prostrate form with joy awaits the call;
Or when forsaken by the loved and false,
The broken spirit sits beside the grave,
And weaves strange garlands from the withered flowers,
To crown the head-stone of departed hopes,
Thou art a welcome guest.
But when in youth and health, without a sign,
Thou comest in thy most appalling form,
Swift as the sunbeam streaming from on high,
Then thou dost rudely snap hope’s brightest buds,
And form dread sepulchres in every heart—
Chasms that never close with rolling years—
Wounds that forever festering, never heal,
Till deeper sorrows settle on the soul.
Autumn departs, and with it ends the song
Of the rude bard, who first essayed to sing
In high scholastic verse, its scenes of gold;
A pleasant pastime for an idle month,
When the hot sun pour’d down its sickly rays.
And pestilence at noonday walked abroad.
Autumn departs, and on its cheerless gale,
Sighing o’er barren moor and russet grove,
The feeble lay goes forth, with deep distrust,
And much of hope, entwined with more of fear.
If it shall fail—and stranger things have been,
And with the leaves around, whirl through the glen,
And up the forest’s melancholy path,
Lifeless and useless, as its withered band.
’Tis an old truth, by bard of sweetness told,
“Leaves have their time to fall, and stars to set.”
But if perchance some generous soul shall take
The half-fledged warbler to a pleasant home,
Where bright-eyed children gather in their joy—
Type of the host that throng the homes of Heaven—
Glean from its varied notes one sound to please,
One truth to charm and elevate the soul,
And bid young genius in her wild-wood sing,
The scenes and glories of her native land—
Then shall the bard in his retreat rejoice,
And sing again, when spring, with sunny brow,
Shall speak the resurrection of the flowers.
———
BY THOMAS FITZGERALD.
———
Ah! weary days have passed since last we met,
But not with time has distance longer grown!
My heart, well-tutored, never can forget
Its love for thee, my beautiful, my own!
I would that I were near thee, gentle one,
To see thee gladly smile, and hear thee speak,
And list the sweetness of thy silver tone,
And mark the changes on thy blushing cheek!
I see the pathway where our ramble led—
Where brightest flowers in rarest fragrance vied—
The fairy nook, whence sunlight trembling fled,
And laughing water-fall in music died!
But not for me the pensive walk of eve—
Life’s sterner duties claim my footsteps now;
Yet does the yearning heart full often grieve
For those dear haunts where first we breathed love’s vow.
———
BY KATE DASHWOOD.
———
A fair, young, thoughtful face—and very pale
Is the soft dimpled cheek, and o’er her brow
Lingereth a strange, wild beauty; many a tale
Thy bright ideal weaveth for her now.
Those breathing lips!—they speak not, but you feel
Love’s thrilling kiss, hath mingled with his sigh,
The dreamy depths of those dark eyes reveal
The soul of Sappho’s song—to love or die!
Yet on that fair, young brow is set the seal
Of woman’s firm resolve, and o’er-mastering high.
———
BY HENRY D. THOREAU.
———
(Concluded from page 152.)
But he is wilfully and pertinaciously unjust, even
scurrilous, impolite, ungentlemanly; calls us “Imbeciles,”
“Dilettants,” “Philistines,” implying sometimes
what would not sound well expressed. If
he would adopt the newspaper style, and take back
these hard names—but where is the reader who
does not derive some benefit from these epithets,
applying them to himself? Think not that with
each repetition of them there is a fresh overflowing
of bile; oh no! Perhaps none at all after the first
time, only a faithfulness, the right name being found,
to apply it—“They are the same ones we meant
before”—and ofttimes with a genuine sympathy
and encouragement expressed. Indeed, there appears
in all his writings a hearty and manly sympathy
with all misfortune and wretchedness, and not
a weak and sniveling one. They who suspect a
Mephistophiles, or sneering, satirical devil, under
all, have not learned the secret of true humor, which
sympathizes with the gods themselves, in view of
their grotesque, half-finished creatures.
He is, in fact, the best tempered, and not the least
impartial of reviewers. He goes out of his way to
do justice to profligates and quacks. There is
somewhat even Christian, in the rarest and most
peculiar sense, in his universal brotherliness, his
simple, child-like endurance, and earnest, honest
endeavor, with sympathy for the like. And this fact
is not insignificant, that he is almost the only writer
of biography, of the lives of men, in modern times.
So kind and generous a tribute to the genius of
Burns cannot be expected again, and is not needed.
We honor him for his noble reverence for Luther,
and his patient, almost reverent study of Goethe’s
genius, anxious that no shadow of his author’s
meaning escape him for want of trustful attention.
There is nowhere else, surely, such determined and
generous love of whatever is manly in history. His
just appreciation of any, even inferior talent, especially
of all sincerity, under whatever guise, and all
true men of endeavor, must have impressed every
reader. Witness the chapters on Werner, Heyne,
even Cagliostro, and others. He is not likely to
underrate his man. We are surprised to meet with
such a discriminator of kingly qualities in these republican
and democratic days, such genuine loyalty
all thrown away upon the world.
Carlyle, to adopt his own classification, is himself
the hero, as literary man. There is no more notable
working-man in England, in Manchester or Birmingham,
or the mines round about. We know
not how many hours a-day he toils, nor for what
wages, exactly, we only know the results for us.
We hear through the London fog and smoke the
steady systole, diastole, and vibratory hum, from
“Somebody’s Works” there; the “Print Works,”
say some; the “Chemicals,” say others; where
something, at any rate, is manufactured which we
remember to have seen in the market. This is the
place, then. Literature has come to mean, to the
ears of laboring men, something idle, something
cunning and pretty merely, because the nine hundred
and ninety-nine really write for fame or for
amusement. But as the laborer works, and soberly
by the sweat of his brow earns bread for his body,
so this man works anxiously and sadly, to get bread
of life, and dispense it. We cannot do better than
quote his own estimate of labor from Sartor Resartus.
“Two men I honor, and no third. First; the
toil-worn craftsman that with earth-made implement
laboriously conquers the earth, and makes her
man’s. Venerable to me is the hard hand; crooked,
coarse, wherein, notwithstanding, lies a cunning
virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the sceptre of this
planet. Venerable, too, is the rugged face, all
weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence;
for it is the face of a man living manlike. Oh, but
the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because
we must pity as well as love thee. Hardly-entreated
brother! For us was thy back so bent,
for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed;
thou wert our conscript, on whom the lot
fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred. For
in thee, too, lay a god-created form, but it was not
to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the
thick adhesions and defacements of labor; and thy
body, like thy soul, was not to know freedom. Yet
toil on, toil on; thou art in thy duty, be out of it who
may; thou toilest for the altogether indispensable,
for daily bread.”
“A second man I honor, and still more highly;
him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable;
not daily bread, but the bread of life.
Is not he, too, in his duty, endeavoring toward inward
harmony, revealing this, by act or by word,
through all his outward endeavors, be they high or
low? Highest of all, when his outward and his inward
endeavor are one; when we can name him
Artist; not earthly craftsman only, but inspired
thinker, that with heaven-made implement conquers
heaven for us. If the poor and humble toil
that we have food, must not the high and glorious
toil for him in return, that he have light, have
guidance, freedom, immortality? These two in all
their degrees, I honor; all else is chaff and dust,
which let the wind blow whither it listeth.”
“Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I
find both dignities united; and he that must toil outwardly
for the lowest of man’s wants, is also toiling
inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this world
know I nothing than a peasant saint, could such
now anywhere be met with. Such a one will take
thee back to Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the
splendor of heaven spring forth from the humblest
depths of earth, like a light shining in great
darkness.”
Notwithstanding the very genuine, admirable, and
loyal tributes to Burns, Schiller, Goethe, and others,
Carlyle is not a critic of poetry. In the book of
heroes, Shakspeare, the hero, as poet, comes off
rather slimly. His sympathy, as we said, is with
the men of endeavor; not using the life got, but
still bravely getting their life. “In fact,” as he says
of Cromwell, “every where we have to notice the
decisive, practical eye of this man; how he drives
toward the practical and practicable; has a genuine
insight into what is fact.” You must have very stout
legs to get noticed at all by him. He is thoroughly
English in his love of practical men, and dislike for
cant, and ardent enthusiastic heads that are not supported
by any legs. He would kindly knock them
down that they may regain some vigor by touching
their mother earth. We have often wondered how
he ever found out Burns, and must still refer a good
share of his delight in him to neighborhood and early
association. The Lycidas and Comus appearing in
Blackwood’s Magazine, would probably go unread
by him, nor lead him to expect a Paradise Lost.
The condition of England question is a practical
one. The condition of England demands a hero,
not a poet. Other things demand a poet; the poet
answers other demands. Carlyle in London, with
this question pressing on him so urgently, sees no
occasion for minstrels and rhapsodists there. Kings
may have their bards when there are any kings.
Homer would certainly go a begging there. He
lives in Chelsea, not on the plains of Hindostan,
nor on the prairies of the West, where settlers
are scarce, and a man must at least go whistling
to himself.
What he says of poetry is rapidly uttered, and
suggestive of a thought, rather than the deliberate
development of any. He answers your question,
What is poetry? by writing a special poem, as that
Norse one, for instance, in the Book of Heroes,
altogether wild and original;—answers your question,
What is light? by kindling a blaze which
dazzles you, and pales sun and moon, and not as a
peasant might, by opening a shutter. And, certainly,
you would say that this question never could
be answered but by the grandest of poems; yet he
has not dull breath and stupidity enough, perhaps,
to give the most deliberate and universal answer,
such as the fates wring from illiterate and unthinking
men. He answers like Thor, with a stroke of
his hammer, whose dint makes a valley in the
earth’s surface.
Carlyle is not a seer, but a brave looker-on and
reviewer; not the most free and catholic observer of
men and events, for they are likely to find him preoccupied,
but unexpectedly free and catholic when
they fall within the focus of his lens. He does not
live in the present hour, and read men and books
as they occur for his theme, but having chosen this,
he directs his studies to this end.
But if he supplies us with arguments and illustrations
against himself, we will remember that
we may perhaps be convicted of error from the same
source—stalking on these lofty reviewer’s stilts so
far from the green pasturage around. If we look
again at his page, we are apt to retract somewhat
that we have said. Often a genuine poetic feeling
dawns through it, like the texture of the earth seen
through the dead grass and leaves in the spring.
There is indeed more poetry in this author than
criticism on poetry. He often reminds us of the
ancient Scald, inspired by the grimmer features of
life, dwelling longer on Dante than on Shakspeare.
We have not recently met with a more solid and
unquestionable piece of poetic work than that episode
of “The Ancient Monk,” in Past and Present,
at once idyllic, narrative, heroic; a beautiful restoration
of a past age. There is nothing like it elsewhere
that we know of. The History of the French
Revolution is a poem, at length got translated into
prose; an Iliad, indeed, as he himself has it—“The
destructive wrath of Sansculotism: this is what we
speak, having unhappily no voice for singing.”
One improvement we could suggest in this last,
as indeed in most epics, that he should let in the
sun oftener upon his picture. It does not often
enough appear, but it is all revolution, the old way
of human life turned simply bottom upward, so that
when at length we are inadvertently reminded of
the “Brest Shipping,” a St. Domingo colony, and
that anybody thinks of owning plantations, and
simply turning up the soil there, and that now at
length, after some years of this revolution, there is
a falling off in the importation of sugar, we feel a
queer surprise. Had they not sweetened their
water with Revolution then? It would be well if
there were several chapters headed “Work for the
Mouth”—Revolution-work inclusive, of course—“Altitude
of the Sun,” “State of the Crops and Markets,”
“Meteorological Observations,” “Attractive
Industry,” “Day Labor,” &c., just to remind the
reader that the French peasantry did something
beside go without breeches, burn châteaus, get
ready knotted cords, and embrace and throttle one
another by turns. These things are sometimes
hinted at, but they deserve a notice more in proportion
to their importance. We want not only a background
to the picture, but a ground under the feet
also. We remark, too, occasionally, an unphilosophical
habit, common enough elsewhere, in Alison’s
History of Modern Europe, for instance, of
saying, undoubtedly with effect, that if a straw had
not fallen this way or that, why then—but, of
course, it is as easy in philosophy to make kingdoms
rise and fall as straws. The old adage is as true
for our purpose, which says that a miss is as good
as a mile. Who shall say how near the man came
to being killed who was not killed? If an apple
had not fallen then we had never heard of Newton
and the law of gravitation; as if they could not have
contrived to let fall a pear as well.
The poet is blithe and cheery ever, and as well
as nature. Carlyle has not the simple Homeric
health of Wordsworth, nor the deliberate philosophic
turn of Coleridge, nor the scholastic taste of
Landor, but, though sick and under restraint, the
constitutional vigor of one of his old Norse heroes,
struggling in a lurid light, with Iötuns still, striving
to throw the old woman, and “she was Time”—striving
to lift the big cat—and that was “The
Great World-Serpent, which, tail in mouth, girds
and keeps up the whole created world.” The
smith, though so brawny and tough, I should not
call the healthiest man. There is too much shop-work,
too great extremes of heat and cold, and incessant
ten-pound-ten and thrashing of the anvil, in
his life. But the haymaker’s is a true sunny perspiration,
produced by the extreme of summer heat
only, and conversant with the blast of the zephyr,
not of the forge-bellows. We know very well the
nature of this man’s sadness, but we do not know
the nature of his gladness. There sits Bull in the
court all the year round, with his hoarse bark and
discontented growl—not a cross dog, only a canine
habit, verging to madness some think—now separated
from the shuddering travelers only by the
paling, now heard afar in the horizon, even melodious
there; baying the moon o’ nights, baying the
sun by day, with his mastiff mouth. He never goes
after the cows, nor stretches in the sun, nor plays
with the children. Pray give him a longer rope,
ye gods, or let him go at large, and never taste raw
meat more.
The poet will maintain serenity in spite of all
disappointments. He is expected to preserve an
unconcerned and healthy outlook over the world
while he lives. Philosophia practica est eruditionis
meta, philosophy practiced is the good of learning;
and for that other, Oratoris est celare artem, we might
read, Herois est celare pugnam, the hero will conceal
his struggles. Poetry is the only life got, the only
work done, the only pure product and free labor of
man, performed only when he has put all the world
under his feet, and conquered the last of his foes.
Carlyle speaks of Nature with a certain unconscious
pathos for the most part. She is to him a
receded but ever memorable splendor, casting still
a reflected light over all his scenery. As we read
his books here in New England, where there are
potatoes enough, and every man can get his living
peacefully and sportively as the birds and bees, and
need think no more of that, it seems to us as if by
the world he often meant London, at the head of the
tide upon the Thames, the sorest place on the face
of the earth, the very citadel of conservatism. Possibly
a South African village might have furnished
a more hopeful, and more exacting audience, or in
the silence of the wilderness and the desert, he
might have addressed himself more entirely to his
true audience posterity.
In his writings, we should say that he, as conspicuously
as any, though with little enough expressed
or even conscious sympathy, represents the
Reformer class, and all the better for not being the
acknowledged leader of any. In him the universal
plaint is most settled, unappeasable and serious.
Until a thousand named and nameless grievances
are righted, there will be no repose for him in
the lap of nature, or the seclusion of science and
literature. By foreseeing it he hastens the crisis in
the affairs of England, and is as good as many years
added to her history.
As we said, we have no adequate word from
him concerning poets—Homer, Shakspeare; nor
more, we might add, of Saints—Jesus; nor philosophers—Socrates,
Plato; nor mystics—Swedenborg.
He has no articulate sympathy at least with
such as these as yet. Odin, Mahomet, Cromwell,
will have justice at his hands, and we would leave
him to write the Eulogies of all the giants of the
will, but the kings of men, whose kingdoms are
wholly in the hearts of their subjects, strictly transcendent
and moral greatness, what is highest and
worthiest in character, he is not inclined to dwell
upon or point to. To do himself justice, and set
some of his readers right, he should give us some
transcendent hero at length, to rule his demigods
and Titans; develop, perhaps, his reserved and
dumb reverence for Christ, not speaking to a London
or Church of England audience merely. Let
not “sacred silence meditate that sacred matter”
forever, but let us have sacred speech and sacred
scripture thereon. True reverence is not necessarily
dumb, but ofttimes prattling and hilarious as children
in the spring.
Every man will include in his list of worthies
those whom he himself best represents. Carlyle,
and our countryman Emerson, whose place and
influence must ere long obtain a more distinct recognition,
are, to a certain extent, the complement
of each other. The age could not do with one of them,
it cannot do with both. To make a broad and rude
distinction, to suit our present purpose, the former,
as critic, deals with the men of action—Mahomet,
Luther, Cromwell; the latter with the thinkers—Plato,
Shakspeare, Goethe, for though both have written
upon Goethe, they do not meet in him. The one
has more sympathy with the heroes, or practical reformers,
the other with the observers, or philosophers.
Put these worthies together, and you will
have a pretty fair representation of mankind; yet
with one or more memorable exceptions. To say
nothing of Christ, who yet awaits a just appreciation
from literature, the peacefully practical hero, whom
Columbus may represent, is obviously slighted; but
above and after all, the Man of the Age, come to be
called working-man, it is obvious that none yet speaks
to his condition, for the speaker is not yet in his
condition. There is poetry and prophecy to cheer
him, and advice of the head and heart to the hands;
but no very memorable coöperation, it must be confessed,
since the Christian era, or rather since Prometheus
tried it. It is even a note-worthy fact,
that a man addresses effectually in another only
himself still, and what he himself does and is, alone
can he prompt the other to do and to become.
Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy
to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry,
&c. Literature speaks how much still to the past,
how little to the future, how much to the east, how
little to the west—
In the East fames are won,
In the West deeds are done.
One more merit in Carlyle, let the subject be what
it may, is the freedom of prospect he allows, the
entire absence of cant and dogma. He removes
many cart-loads of rubbish, and leaves open a broad
highway. His writings are all enfenced on the side
of the future and the possible. He does not place
himself across the passage out of his books, so that
none may go freely out, but rather by the entrance,
inviting all to come in and go through. No gins,
no net-work, no pickets here, to restrain the free
thinking reader. In many books called philosophical,
we find ourselves running hither and thither, under
and through, and sometimes quite unconsciously
straddling some imaginary fence-work, which in our
clairvoyance we had not noticed, but fortunately,
not with such fatal consequences as happen to those
birds which fly against a white-washed wall, mistaking
it for fluid air. As we proceed the wreck of
this dogmatic tissue collects about the organs of our
perception, like cobwebs about the muzzles of hunting
dogs in dewy mornings. If we look up with
such eyes as these authors furnish, we see no
heavens, but a low pent-roof of straw or tiles, as
if we stood under a shed, with no sky-light through
which to glimpse the blue.
Carlyle, though he does but inadvertently direct
our eyes to the open heavens, nevertheless, lets us
wander broadly underneath, and shows them to us
reflected in innumerable pools and lakes. We have
from him, occasionally, some hints of a possible
science of astronomy even, and revelation of heavenly
arcana, but nothing definite hitherto.
These volumes contain not the highest, but a
very practicable wisdom, which startles and provokes,
rather than informs us. Carlyle does not
oblige us to think; we have thought enough for
him already, but he compels us to act. We accompany
him rapidly through an endless gallery of pictures,
and glorious reminiscences of experiences
unimproved. “Have you not had Moses and the
prophets? Neither will ye be persuaded if one
should rise from the dead.” There is no calm
philosophy of life here, such as you might put at the
end of the Almanac, to hang over the farmer’s
hearth, how men shall live in these winter, in these
summer days. No philosophy, properly speaking,
of love, or friendship, or religion, or politics, or education,
or nature, or spirit; perhaps a nearer approach
to a philosophy of kingship, and of the place
of the literary man, than of any thing else. A rare
preacher, with prayer, and psalm, and sermon, and
benediction, but no contemplation of man’s life from
serene oriental ground, nor yet from the stirring
occidental. No thanksgiving sermon for the holydays,
or the Easter vacations, when all men submit to
float on the full currents of life. When we see
with what spirits, though with little heroism enough,
wood-choppers, drovers, and apprentices, take and
spend life, playing all day long, sunning themselves,
shading themselves, eating, drinking, sleeping, we
think that the philosophy of their life written would
be such a level natural history as the Gardener’s Calendar,
and the works of the early botanists, inconceivably
slow to come to practical conclusions; its
premises away off before the first morning light, ere
the heather was introduced into the British isles,
and no inferences to be drawn during this noon of
the day, not till after the remote evening shadows
have begun to fall around.
There is no philosophy here for philosophers, only
as every man is said to have his philosophy. No
system but such as is the man himself; and, indeed,
he stands compactly enough. No progress beyond
the first assertion and challenge, as it were, with
trumpet blast. One thing is certain, that we had
best be doing something in good earnest, henceforth
forever; that’s an indispensable philosophy. The
before impossible precept, “know thyself,” he translates
into the partially possible one, “know what thou
canst work at.” Sartor Resartus is, perhaps, the
sunniest and most philosophical, as it is the most
autobiographical of his works, in which he drew
most largely on the experience of his youth. But
we miss everywhere a calm depth, like a lake,
even stagnant, and must submit to rapidity and
whirl, as on skates, with all kinds of skillful and
antic motions, sculling, sliding, cutting punch-bowls
and rings, forward and backward. The talent is
very nearly equal to the genius. Sometimes it
would be preferable to wade slowly through a Serbonian
bog, and feel the juices of the meadow. We
should say that he had not speculated far, but faithfully,
living up to it. He lays all the stress still on the
most elementary and initiatory maxims, introductory
to philosophy. It is the experience of the religionist.
He pauses at such a quotation as, “It is only
with renunciation that life, properly speaking, can
be said to begin;” or, “Doubt of any sort cannot be
removed except by action;” or, “Do the duty which
lies nearest thee.” The chapters entitled, “The
Everlasting No,” and “The Everlasting Yea,” contain
what you might call the religious experience of
his hero. In the latter, he assigns to him these
words, brief, but as significant as any we remember
in this author:—“One Bible I know, of whose
plenary inspiration doubt is not so much as possible;
nay, with my own eyes I saw the God’s-hand writing
it: thereof all other Bibles are but leaves.” This
belongs to “The Everlasting Yea;” yet he lingers
unaccountably in “The Everlasting No,” under the
negative pole. “Truth!” he still cries with Teüfelsdrock,
“though the heavens crush me for following
her: no falsehood! though a whole celestial Lubberland
were the price of apostacy.” Again, “Living
without God in the world, of God’s light I was
not utterly bereft; if my as yet sealed eyes, with
their unspeakable longing, could nowhere see Him,
nevertheless, in my heart He was present, and His
heaven-written law still stood legible and sacred
there.” Again, “Ever from that time, [the era of his
Protest,] the temper of my misery was changed: not
fear or whining sorrow was it, but indignation and
grim, fire-eyed defiance.” And in the “Centre of
Indifference,” as editor, he observes, that “it was no
longer a quite hopeless unrest,” and then proceeds,
not in his best style, “For the fire-baptized soul, long
so scathed and thunder-riven, here feels its own
freedom, which feeling is its Baphometic Baptism:
the citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus gained
by assault, and will keep inexpungable; outward
from which the remaining dominions, not, indeed,
without hard battling, will doubtless by degrees be
conquered and pacificated.”
Beside some philosophers of larger vision, Carlyle
stands like an honest, half-despairing boy, grasping
at some details only of their world systems. Philosophy,
certainly, is some account of truths, the fragments
and very insignificant parts of which man
will practice in this work-shop; truths infinite and in
harmony with infinity; in respect to which the very
objects and ends of the so-called practical philosopher,
will be mere propositions, like the rest. It
would be no reproach to a philosopher, that he
knew the future better than the past, or even than
the present. It is better worth knowing. He will
prophecy, tell what is to be, or in other words, what
alone is, under appearances, laying little stress on
the boiling of the pot, or the Condition of England
question. He has no more to do with the condition
of England than with her national debt, which a
vigorous generation would not inherit. The philosopher’s
conception of things will, above all, be
truer than other men’s, and his philosophy will subordinate
all the circumstances of life. To live like
a philosopher, is to live, not foolishly, like other men,
but wisely, and according to universal laws. In this,
which was the ancient sense, we think there has
been no philosopher in modern times. The wisest
and most practical men of recent history, to whom
this epithet has been hastily applied, have lived
comparatively meagre lives, of conformity and tradition,
such as their fathers transmitted to them.
But a man may live in what style he can. Between
earth and heaven, there is room for all kinds. If he
take counsel of fear and prudence, he has already
failed. One who believed, by his very constitution,
some truth which a few words express, would make
a revolution never to be forgotten in this world; for
it needs but a fraction of truth to found houses and
empires on.
However, such distinctions as poet and philosopher,
do not much assist our final estimate of a man;
we do not lay much stress on them. “A man’s a
man for a’ that.” If Carlyle does not take two steps
in philosophy, are there any who take three? Philosophy
having crept clinging to the rocks, so far,
puts out its feelers many ways in vain. It would be
hard to surprise him by the relation of any important
human experience, but in some nook or corner of
his works, you will find that this, too, was sometimes
dreamed of in his philosophy.
To sum up our most serious objections, in a few
words, we should say that Carlyle indicates a depth,—and
we mean not impliedly, but distinctly,—which
he neglects to fathom. We want to know more
about that which he wants to know as well. If any
luminous star, or undissolvable nebula, is visible
from his station, which is not visible from ours,
the interests of science require that the fact be
communicated to us. The universe expects every
man to do his duty in his parallel of latitude.
We want to hear more of his inmost life; his hymn
and prayer, more; his elegy and eulogy, less; that
he should speak more from his character, and less
from his talent; communicate centrally with his
readers, and not by a side; that he should say what
he believes, without suspecting that men disbelieve
it, out of his never-misunderstood nature. Homer
and Shakspeare speak directly and confidently to us.
The confidence implied in the unsuspicious tone of
the world’s worthies, is a great and encouraging
fact. Dig up some of the earth you stand on, and
show that. If he gave us religiously the meagre
results of his experience, his style would be less
picturesque and diversified, but more attractive and
impressive. His genius can cover all the land with
gorgeous palaces, but the reader does not abide in
them, but pitches his tent rather in the desert and
on the mountain peak.
When we look about for something to quote, as
the fairest specimen of the man, we confess that we
labor under an unusual difficulty; for his philosophy
is so little of the proverbial or sentential kind, and
opens so gradually, rising insensibly from the reviewer’s
level, and developing its thought completely
and in detail, that we look in vain for the
brilliant passages, for point and antithesis, and must
end by quoting his works entire. What in a writer
of less breadth would have been the proposition
which would have bounded his discourse, his column
of victory, his Pillar of Hercules, and ne plus
ultra, is in Carlyle frequently the same thought unfolded;
no Pillar of Hercules, but a considerable
prospect, north and south, along the Atlantic coast.
There are other pillars of Hercules, like beacons and
light-houses, still further in the horizon, toward Atlantis,
set up by a few ancient and modern travelers;
but, so far as this traveler goes, he clears and colonizes,
and all the surplus population of London is
bound thither at once. What we would quote is, in
fact, his vivacity, and not any particular wisdom or
sense, which last is ever synonymous with sentence,
[sententia,] as in his cotemporaries, Coleridge, Landor
and Wordsworth.
We have not attempted to discriminate between
his works, but have rather regarded them all as one
work, as is the man himself. We have not examined
so much as remembered them. To do
otherwise, would have required a more indifferent,
and perhaps even less just review, than the present.
The several chapters were thankfully received, as
they came out, and now we find it impossible to
say which was best; perhaps each was best in its
turn. They do not require to be remembered by
chapters—that is a merit—but are rather remembered
as a well-known strain, reviving from time to
time, when it had nearly died away, and always inspiring
us to worthier and more persistent endeavors.
In his last work, “The Letters and Speeches of
Oliver Cromwell,” Carlyle has added a chapter to
the history of England; has actually written a chapter
of her history, and, in comparison with this, there
seems to be no other,—this, and the thirty thousand
or three hundred thousand pamphlets in the British
Museum, and that is all. This book is a practical
comment on Universal History. What if there were
a British Museum in Athens and Babylon, and
nameless cities! It throws light on the history of the
Iliad and the labors of Pisistratus. History is, then,
an account of memorable events that have sometime
transpired, and not an incredible and confused fable,
quarters for scholars merely, or a gymnasium for
poets and orators. We may say that he has dug up
a hero, who was buried alive in his battle-field,
hauled him out of his cairn, on which every passer
had cast a pamphlet. We had heard of their digging
up Arthurs before to be sure they were there;
and, to be sure they were there, their bones, seven
feet of them; but they had to bury them again.
Others have helped to make known Shakspeare,
Milton, Herbert, to give a name to such treasures
as we all possessed; but, in this instance, not only
a lost character has been restored to our imaginations,
but palpably a living body, as it were, to our
senses, to wear and sustain the former. His Cromwell’s
restoration, if England will read it faithfully,
and addressed to New England too. Every reader
will make his own application.
To speak deliberately, we think that in this instance,
vague rumor and a vague history have for
the first time been subjected to a rigid scrutiny, and
the wheat, with at least novel fidelity, sifted from the
chaff; so that there remain for result,—First, Letters
and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, now for the first
time read or readable, and well nigh as complete as
the fates will permit; secondly, Deeds, making an
imperfect and fragmentary life, which may, with probability,
be fathered upon him; thirdly, this wreck
of an ancient picture, the present editor has, to the
best of his ability, restored, sedulously scraping
away the daubings of successive bunglers, and
endeavoring to catch the spirit of the artist himself.
Not the worst, nor a barely possible, but for once
the most favorable construction has been put upon
this evidence of the life of a man, and the result is
a picture of the ideal Cromwell, the perfection of
the painter’s art. Possibly this was the actual man.
At any rate, this only can contain the actual hero.
We confess that when we read these Letters and
Speeches, unquestionably Cromwell’s, with open
and confident mind, we get glimpses occasionally
of a grandeur and heroism, which even this editor
has not proclaimed. His “Speeches” make us forget
modern orators, and might go right into the
next edition of the Old Testament, without alteration.
Cromwell was another sort of man than we
had taken him to be. These Letters and Speeches
have supplied the lost key to his character. Verily
another soldier than Bonaparte; rejoicing in the
triumph of a psalm; to whom psalms were for
Magna Charta and Heralds’ Book, and whose victories
were “crowning mercies.” For stern, antique,
and practical religion, a man unparalleled, since the
Jewish dispensation, in the line of kings. An old
Hebrew warrior, indeed, and last right-hand man of
the Lord of Hosts, that has blown his ram’s horn
about Jericho. Yet, with a remarkable common
sense and unexpected liberality, there was joined
in him, too, such a divine madness, though with
large and sublime features, as that of those dibblers
of beans on St George’s Hill, whom Carlyle tells of.
He still listened to ancient and decaying oracles. If
his actions were not always what Christianity or
the truest philosophy teaches, still they never fail to
impress us as noble, and however violent, will
always be pardoned to the great purpose and sincerity
of the man. His unquestionable hardness,
not to say willfulness, not prevailing by absolute
truth and greatness of character, but honestly striving
to bend things to his will, is yet grateful to consider
in this or any age. As John Maidstone said,
“He was a strong man in the dark perils of war;
in the high places of the field, hope shone in him
like a pillar of fire, when it had gone out in the
others.” And as Milton sang, whose least testimony
cannot be spared—
“Our chief of men,
Guided by faith and matchless fortitude.”
None ever spake to Cromwell before, sending a
word of cheer across the centuries—not the “hear!”
“hear!” of modern parliaments, but the congratulation
and sympathy of a brother soul. The Letters
and Speeches owe not a little to the “Intercalations”
and “Annotations” of the “latest of the Commentators.”
The reader will not soon forget how like a
happy merchant in the crowd, listening to his favorite
speaker, he is all on the alert, and sympathetic,
nudging his neighbors from time to time, and throwing
in his responsive or interrogatory word. All is
good, both that which he didn’t hear, and that
which he did. He not only makes him speak audibly,
but he makes all parties listen to him, all England
sitting round, and give in their comments,
“groans,” or “blushes,” or “assent;” indulging sometimes
in triumphant malicious applications to the
present day, when there is a palpable hit; supplying
the look and attitude of the speaker, and the tone
of his voice, and even rescuing his unutterable,
wrecked and submerged thought,—for this orator
begins speaking anywhere within sight of the beginning,
and leaves off when the conclusion is visible.
Our merchant listens, restless, meanwhile, encouraging
his fellow-auditors, when the speech grows
dim and involved, and pleasantly congratulating
them, when it runs smoothly; or, in touching soliloquy,
he exclaims, “Poor Oliver, noble Oliver”—“Courage,
my brave one!”
And all along, between the Letters and Speeches,
as readers well remember, he has ready such a
fresh top-of-the-morning salutation as conjures up
the spirits of those days, and men go marching over
English sward, not wired skeletons, but with firm,
elastic muscles, and clang of armor on their thighs,
if they wore swords, or the twang of psalms and
canticles on their lips. His blunt, “Who are you?”
put to the shadowy ghosts of history, they vanish
into deeper obscurity than ever. Vivid phantasmagorian
pictures of what is transpiring in England in
the meanwhile, there are, not a few, better than if
you had been there to see.
All of Carlyle’s works might well enough be embraced
under the title of one of them, a good
specimen brick, “On Heroes, Hero-worship, and the
Heroic in History.” Of this department, he is the
Chief Professor in the World’s University, and even
leaves Plutarch behind. Such intimate and living,
such loyal and generous sympathy with the heroes
of history, not one in one age only, but forty in forty
ages, such an unparalleled reviewing and greeting
of all past worth, with exceptions, to be sure,—but
exceptions were the rule, before,—it was, indeed, to
make this the age of review writing, as if now one
period of the human story were completing itself;
and getting its accounts settled. This soldier has
told the stories with new emphasis, and will be a
memorable hander-down of fame to posterity. And
with what wise discrimination he has selected his
men, with reference both to his own genius and to
theirs: Mahomet,—Dante,—Cromwell,—Voltaire,—Johnson,—Burns,—Goethe,—Richter,—Schiller,—Mirabeau;
could any of these have been spared?
These we wanted to hear about. We have not as commonly
the cold and refined judgment of the scholar
and critic merely, but something more human and
affecting. These eulogies have the glow and
warmth of friendship. There is sympathy not with
mere fames, and formless, incredible things, but
with kindred men,—not transiently, but life-long he
has walked with them.
The attitude of some, in relation to Carlyle’s love
of heroes, and men of the sword, reminds us of the
procedure at the anti-slavery meetings, when some
member, being warmed, begins to speak with more
latitude than usual of the Bible or the Church, for a
few prudent and devout ones to spring a prayer
upon him, as the saying is; that is, propose suddenly
to unite in prayer, and so solemnize the minds of
the audience, or dismiss them at once; which may
oftener be to interrupt a true prayer by most gratuitous
profanity. But the spring of this trap, we are
glad to learn, has grown somewhat rusty, and is not
so sure of late.
No doubt, some of Carlyle’s worthies, should they
ever return to earth, would find themselves unpleasantly
put upon their good behavior, to sustain their
characters; but if he can return a man’s life more
perfect to our hands, than it was left at his death,
following out the design of its author, we shall have
no great cause to complain. We do not want a
Daguerreotype likeness. All biography is the life
of Adam,—a much-experienced man,—and time
withdraws something partial from the story of every
individual, that the historian may supply something
general. If these virtues were not in this man,
perhaps they are in his biographer,—no fatal mistake.
Really, in any other sense, we never do, nor
desire to, come at the historical man,—unless we
rob his grave, that is the nearest approach. Why
did he die, then? He is with his bones, surely.
No doubt, Carlyle has a propensity to exaggerate
the heroic in history, that is, he creates you an ideal
hero rather than another thing, he has most of that
material. This we allow in all its senses, and in
one narrower sense it is not so convenient. Yet
what were history if he did not exaggerate it?
How comes it that history never has to wait for
facts, but for a man to write it? The ages may go
on forgetting the facts never so long, he can remember
two for every one forgotten. The musty records
of history, like the catacombs, contain the perishable
remains, but only in the breast of genius are
embalmed the souls of heroes. There is very little
of what is called criticism here; it is love and reverence,
rather, which deal with qualities not relatively,
but absolutely great; for whatever is admirable in
a man is something infinite, to which we cannot set
bounds. These sentiments allow the mortal to die,
the immortal and divine to survive. There is
something antique, even in his style of treating his
subject, reminding us that Heroes and Demi-gods,
Fates and Furies, still exist, the common man is
nothing to him, but after death the hero is apotheosized
and has a place in heaven, as in the religion
of the Greeks.
Exaggeration! was ever any virtue attributed to
a man without exaggeration? was ever any vice,
without infinite exaggeration? Do we not exaggerate
ourselves to ourselves, or do we recognize
ourselves for the actual men we are? Are we not
all great men? Yet what are we actually to speak
of? We live by exaggeration, what else is it to anticipate
more than we enjoy? The lightning is an
exaggeration of the light. Exaggerated history is
poetry, and truth referred to a new standard. To a
small man every greater is an exaggeration. He
who cannot exaggerate is not qualified to utter
truth. No truth we think was ever expressed but
with this sort of emphasis, so that for the time there
seemed to be no other. Moreover, you must speak
loud to those who are hard of hearing, and so you
acquire a habit of shouting to those who are not.
By an immense exaggeration we appreciate our
Greek poetry and philosophy, and Egyptian ruins;
our Shakspeares and Miltons, our liberty and
Christianity. We give importance to this hour over
all other hours. We do not live by justice, but by
grace. As the sort of justice which concerns us in
our daily intercourse is not that administered by
the judge, so the historical justice which we prize
is not arrived at by nicely balancing the evidence.
In order to appreciate any, even the humblest man,
you must first, by some good fortune, have acquired
a sentiment of admiration, even of reverence, for
him, and there never were such exaggerators as
these. Simple admiration for a hero renders a
juster verdict than the wisest criticism, which
necessarily degrades what is high to its own level.
There is no danger in short of saying too much in
praise of one man, provided you can say more in
praise of a better man. If by exaggeration a man
can create for us a hero, where there was nothing
but dry bones before, we will thank him, and let
Dryasdust administer historical justice. This is
where a true history properly begins, when some
genius arises, who can turn the dry and musty
records into poetry. As we say, looking to the
future, that what is best is truest, so, in one sense,
we may say looking into the past, for the only past
that we are to look at, must also be future to us.
The great danger is not of excessive partiality or
sympathy with one, but of a shallow justice to
many, in which, after all, none gets his deserts.
Who has not experienced that praise is truer than
naked justice? As if man were to be the judge of
his fellows, and should repress his rising sympathy
with the prisoner at the bar, considering the
many honest men abroad, whom he had never
countenanced.
To try him by the German rule of referring an
author to his own standard, we will quote the following
from Carlyle’s remarks on history, and leave the
reader to consider how far his practice has been
consistent with his theory. “Truly, if History is
Philosophy teaching by experience, the writer fitted
to compose history, is hitherto an unknown man.
The experience itself would require all knowledge
to record it, were the All-wisdom needful for such
Philosophy as would interpret it, to be had for
asking. Better were it that mere earthly historians
should lower such pretensions, more suitable for
omniscience than for human science; and aiming
only at some picture of the things acted, which
picture itself, will at best be a poor approximation,
leave the inscrutable purport of them an acknowledged
secret; or, at most, in reverent Faith, far
different from that teaching of Philosophy, pause
over the mysterious vestiges of Him, whose path is
in the great deep of Time, whom history indeed
reveals, but only all History and in Eternity, will
clearly reveal.”
Who lives in London to tell this generation who
have been the great men of our race? We have
read that on some exposed place in the city of
Geneva, they have fixed a brazen indicator for the
use of travelers, with the names of the mountain
summits in the horizon marked upon it, “so that
by taking sight across the index you can distinguish
them at once. You will not mistake Mont Blanc,
if you see him, but until you get accustomed to the
panorama, you may easily mistake one of his court
for the king.” It stands there a piece of mute brass,
that seems nevertheless to know in what vicinity it
is: and there perchance it will stand, when the
nation that placed it there has passed away, still in
sympathy with the mountains, forever discriminating
in the desert.
So, we may say, stands this man, pointing as
long as he lives, in obedience to some spiritual
magnetism, to the summits in the historical horizon,
for the guidance of his fellows.
Truly, our greatest blessings are very cheap.
To have our sunlight without paying for it, without
any duty levied,—to have our poet there in England,
to furnish us entertainment, and what is better
provocation, from year to year, all our lives long,
to make the world seem richer for us, the age more
respectable, and life better worth the living,—all
without expense of acknowledgment even, but
silently accepted out of the east, like morning light
as a matter of course.
Now fitful clouds scud o’er the skies,
And fairy showers patter by,
And in the wood the low wind sighs,
And shadows o’er the brown fields fly!
Low fades the sun, then blazes out,
Glinting on grass, and twig, and tree—
Ah! April, boyish out and out,
Now tears, and now all jollity!
OR “YOU WONT, WONT YOU?”
———
BY JOSEPH C. NEAL.
———
There; now!
You see—do you not?—Nay, you may almost
hear it, if you listen attentively. Mr. Kerr Mudgeon—great
many of the Kerr Mudgeons about, in various
places—but this Mr. Kerr Mudgeon—going to a
party as he was—desirous too, as people generally
are on such occasions, of looking particularly well—and
all ready, to his own infinite satisfaction—all
ready except the final operation of putting on his
bettermost coat—has torn that important article of
gentlemanly costume—one may work without a
coat, you know, and work all the easier for the
relief; but it is not altogether polite to leave it at
home on a peg when you go to a party. Torn his
coat—not through his own fault, as Mr. Kerr Mudgeon
would tell you explicitly enough—he never is,
never was, never can be in fault—but because of
that coat’s ill timed and provoking resistance to the
operation of being donned. The coat might have
known—who is ever thus to be trifled with in the
process of dressing? Yes, the coat must have
known. Ah, coats and the makers of coats have
much to answer for. Kerr Mudgeon is ruffled,
ruffles of this sort, causing a man to look none the
handsomer or the more amiable for the ruffle. Such
ruffles are not becoming.
“Ho! ho! wont go on, hey?” cried Mr. Kerr Mudgeon,
and Mr. Kerr Mudgeon panted and Mr.
Kerr Mudgeon blew, on the high pressure principle,
until the steam of his wrath had reached its
highest point.
It is a fearful moment with the Kerr Mudgeons,
when it is manifest that something must break—a
blood vessel or the furniture, or the peace of the
commonwealth. Why will things animate and inanimate
conspire to bring about such a crisis?
Kerr Mudgeons would be sweet tempered if you
would only permit them.
The coat positively refused to go on any further—the
contumacious raiment. What could Kerr Mudgeon
do in such a strait of perverse broad cloth?
“Tell me you wont go on,” muttered Kerr Mudgeon,
setting his teeth, as a rifleman sets his trigger;
“I’ll make you go on, I will,” shouted he.—
There’s no such word as fail with Mr. Kerr
Mudgeon. Something is sure to be done when he
is once fairly roused to the work. It is a rule of his
to combat like with like; and so—and so—stamping
his foot determinedly, and gathering all his
forces for a grand demonstration against the obstinacy
of tight sleeves, he carried his point as he proposed
to carry it, by a rushing coup de main, to the material
detriment of the fabric.—But what of that? Was
it not a victory for Kerr Mudgeon? The coat had
yielded to the force of his will; and if the victory
had been gained at cost, is it not always so with
victories?—Glory—is that to be had for nothing?—No—depreciate
the cost of glory, and pray tell me
what becomes of glory?—It is glory no longer.
A luxury, to be a luxury, must be beyond the general
reach—too expensive for the millions—too
costly for the masses.
“And now—ha! ha!—ho! ho!—he! he!—come
off!” shrieked Mr. Kerr Mudgeon; “Now you’ve
done all the mischief you could, come off.” Kerr
Mudgeon divested himself of the fractured, but
now humbled, penitent and discomfitted coat, and
following up his first success, like an able tactician,
he danced in a transport of joy upon its mangled
fragments and its melancholy remains. Ghastly
moment of triumph o’er a foe. Alas, Kerr Mudgeon
be merciful to the vanquished when incapacitated
for the war.
But no—coolness comes not on the instant—not
to the Kerr Mudgeons. They have no relationship
to the Kew Cumbers. They disdain the alliance;
and Mr. Kerr Mudgeon’s coat had been conquered
only—not punished.
“That’s what you get by being obstinate,” added
he, as he kicked the expiring coat about the room,
knocking down a lamp, upsetting an inkstand, and
doing sundry other minor pieces of mischief all of
which, of course, he charged to the account of the
coat, as aforesaid—It was coat’s fault altogether.
Mr. Kerr Mudgeon is not naturally in a passion.
He would not have been in a passion had it not
been for the coat—not he—the coat was the incendiary
cause; and we trust that every coat, frock or
body—sack-coat or any other of the infinite variety
of coats now in existence, with all other coats that
are to be, may take timely example and salutary
warning from the doleful fate of Mr. Kerr Mudgeon’s
coat, that there may be no sewing of tares,
and an exemption from rent. A coat is never improved
by participation in battle.
And this unhappy coat, which has thus fallen a
victim to its incapacity to adapt itself to the form
and pressure of circumstances, is by no means a
singular case in the experience of Mr. Kerr Mudgeon.
We mention it rather as a symbol and as an
emblem of the trials and vexations that ambuscade
his way through life, to vex him at unguarded moments
and shake him from his propriety. Boots, it
will appear, have served him just so, particularly
on a warm morning when unusual effort fevers
one for the day. Did you ever see Kerr Mudgeon
in a contest with his boots, when the leather, like a
sturdy sentinel, refused ingress to Kerr Mudgeon’s
heel and declared that there “was no admission”
to the premises, in despite of coaxings, of soap,
and of the pulverizations of soap-stone? If you
never saw that sight, you ought to see it, before
you shuffle off this mortal coil—indeed you ought, as
Kerr Mudgeon toils and pants at the reluctant boots,
in the vain effort “to grapple them to his sole, with
hooks of steel.” Then it is most especially
that a Kerr Mudgeon is “lovelily dreadful,”
like ocean in a storm. Whether Salt Petre will
explode or not, just set the Kerr Mudgeons at
a tight boot, and you shall hear such explosions of
tempestous wrath as were never heard under other
circumstances. The Gun Cotton is like lambs-wool
in the comparison, as Kerr Mudgeon hops about in
a state of betweenity, the boot half on, half off,
declining either to go forward or to retreat. We
pity that boot should Kerr Mudgeon find a failure
to his deep intent. It has sufferings in store—a
species of storage which is never agreeable.
Corks, too—did you ever dwell upon a Kerr
Mudgeon endeavoring to extract a cork, without
the mechanical appliances of a screw? The getting
out of corks with one’s fingers is always more or less of
a trial. There is donkeyism in corks; and those that
will yield a little, are generally sure to break. Concession,
conciliation, and compromise demand under
these circumstances, that if the cork will not come
out, it should be made to go in, to employ the ingenuity
of future ages in fishing it up with slip-knots
and nooses. But Kerr Mudgeon with a cork—he
never, “Mr. Brown,” can be prevailed upon to
“give it up so;” not even if you find the cork-screw
for him. Rather would he hurt his hand,
loosen his teeth, break his penknife or twist a fork
into an invalid condition, than allow himself to be
ingloriously baffled by the contemptible oppugnation
and hostility of a cork and a bottle, thirsty and
impatient as he may be for the imbibation of the
contents thereof. If all else fail—Kerr Mudgeon
enraged, and the bystanders in an agony of nervousness
at the scene—“smack” goes the bottle’s neck
against a table or “whack” over the back of a
chair—“you wont, wont you!”—or in the more
protracted and aggravating case, “smash!” goes
the whole bottle to the wall, for the embellishment
of paper hangings and the improvement of carpeting—Victoria!
Something is always the matter, too, with the
bureau when he would open or shut a drawer.—Either
it will not come out or it wont go in. That
drawer must take the consequences; and doors—lucky
are they to escape a fractured panel, if
doors prove refractory, as doors sometimes will.—Nobody
can open a door so featly as a Kerr
Mudgeon.
“You wont, wont you?” and so he appeals to
the ultima ratio regum—the last reasoning of
Kings—which means as many of thumps, cuffs and
kicks as may be requisite to the purpose. It is a
knock-down argument.
Pooh! pooh!—how you talk of the efficacy of
the soft answer in the turning away of wrath.—Nonsense,
Mr. George Combe, that wrath to the
wrathful is only fuel to the flame. Mr. Kerr Mudgeon
has no faith in passive resistance and in other
doctrines of that sort. Smite his cheek, and then
see what will come of the smitation. Go to him if
you want “as good as you give,” and you will be
sure to obtain measure, exact, yea, and running over.
And so Mr. Kerr Mudgeon has always a large
stock of quarrel on hand, unsettled and neat as imported—feuds
everywhere, to keep him warm in
the winter season. A good hater is Mr. Kerr Mudgeon—a
bramble bush to scratch withal.
“Try to impose on me,” says Kerr Mudgeon,
“I’d like to see ’em at it. They’ll soon find I’m not
afraid of anybody;” and he therefore seeks to
impress that fact with distinctness on everybody’s
mind; and, in consequence, if anybody has unexpended
choler about him—a pet rage or so, pent up,
or a latent exasperation—make him acquainted
with Kerr Mudgeon, and observe the effect of the
contact of such a spark as Mudgeon with an inflammable
magazine. Should you find yourself peevish
generally, and a little crusty or so, to those around
you—primed, as it were, for contention, should it
be fairly offered, stop as you go to business, at Kerr
Mudgeon’s. He will accommodate you, and you
will feel much better afterward, you will—“calm
as a summer morning,” as the politicians have it.
Kerr Mudgeon rides; and his horse must abide a
liberal application of whip and spur, sometimes inducing
it as a corollary—is a tumble to be regarded
as a corollary from the saddle?—inducing it as a
corollary, that Kerr Mudgeon must abide in the
mire, with a fractured tibia or fibia, as the case may
be. “You wont, wont you?”— and there are horses
who don’t, when not able clearly to understand
what is to be done. Now, the horse swerves, and
Kerr Mudgeon takes the lateral slide. Again the
steed bows—with politeness enough—and Kerr
Mudgeon is a flying phenomenon over his head—gracefully,
like a spread-eagle in a fit of enthusiasm.
When he is down he says he never gives up to a
horse.
Kerr Mudgeon delights also to quicken the paces
of your lounging dog, by such abrupt and sharp
appeal to the feelings of the animal as occasion
may suggest; and often there is an interchange of
compliment, biped and quadrupedal, thus elicited,
returning bites for blows, to square accounts between
human attack and canine indignation. Some dogs
do not appreciate graceful attentions and captivating
endearments. “Dogs are so revengeful,” says Kerr
Mudgeon. His dogs always run away; “dogs are so
ungrateful, too,” quoth he.
Unfortunate Kerr Mudgeon!—What is to become
of him until the world is rendered more complaisant
and acquiescent, prepared in all respects to go his
way?
In the street, he takes the straightest line from
place to place, having learnt from his schoolboy
mathematics, that this is decidedly the shortest
method of going from place to place. And yet,
how people jostle him, first on the right hand and
then on the left? Why do they not clear the track
for Kerr Mudgeon?
Then at the Post Office, in the hour of delivery.
Kerr Mudgeon wants his letters. What is more
natural than that a man should want his letters?
“Quit scrouging!” says somebody, as he knocks
Mr. Kerr Mudgeon in the ribs with his elbow.
“Wait for your turn!” cries somebody else,
jostling Mr. Kerr Mudgeon on the opposite ribs.
Still Kerr Mudgeon struggles through the press,
resolved upon obtaining his letters before other people
obtain their letters, having his feet trampled
almost to a mummy, his garments disarranged, if
not torn, and in addition to bruises, perhaps losing
his fifty dollar breast-pin, to complete the harmony
of the picture; but still obtaining his letters in
advance of his competitors—five minutes saved or
thereabouts—what triumph! what a victory! To be
sure, after such a struggle, Mr. Kerr Mudgeon
consumes much more than the five minutes, in
putting himself to rights, and finds himself in a towering
passion for an hour or two, besides groaning
for a considerable length of time over his bruises
and his losses, all of which might have been escaped
by a few moments of patience. But then the victory—“you
wont, wont you?” Was Kerr Mudgeon
ever baffled by any species of resistance? Not he.
“People are such brutes,” says he; “no more
manners than so many pigs—try not to let me get
my letters as soon as any of them, will they? I’ll
teach ’em that a Kerr Mudgeon is not to be trifled
with—just as good a right to be first as anybody;
and I will be first, wherever I go, cost what it may.”
We do not know that Kerr Mudgeon ever entered
into a calculation as to the profit and loss of the
operation of the rule that governed his life in intercourse
with society. Indeed, we rather think not.
But it is probable that in the long run, it costs as
much as it comes to, if it does not cost a great deal
more, thus to persist in having one’s own way in
every thing. In crossing the street now, when the
black and fluent mire is particularly abundant, Mr.
Kerr Mudgeon insists upon the flag-stones—“as good
a right as anybody,” and thus pushes others into a
predicament unpleasant to their boots and detrimental
to their blacking, so that their understandings
become clouded, as they lose all their polish. In
general, such a course as this does very well—but
it will sometimes happen, as it has happened, that
two Kerr Mudgeons meet—the hardest fend off—and
thus our Kerr Mudgeon is toppled full length
into a bed much more soft than is altogether desirable,
which vexes him.
Did you, of a rainy day, ever see Kerr Mudgeon
incline his umbrella to allow another umbrella to
pass? We are sure you never did. Kerr Mudgeon’s
umbrella is as good as anybody’s umbrella,
and will maintain its dignity against all comers,
though it has been torn to fragments by the sharp
points of other umbrellas, which thought themselves
quite as good as it could pretend to be—and so,
Kerr Mudgeon got himself now and then into a
fray, to say nothing of suits for assault and battery,
gracefully and agreeably interspersed. Ho! ho!
umbrellas!—“you wont, wont you?”
Kerr Mudgeon walks with a cane—carries it
horizontally under his arm, muddy at the ferule
perchance; and canes thus disposed, come awkwardly
in contact with the crossing currents of
persons and costumes. But what does he care for
the soiled garments of the ladies or the angry countenances
of offended gentlemen? Is not Kerr Mudgeon
with his cane, as good as anybody else and his
cane? Horizontally—he will wear it so. That’s
his way.
“The world don’t improve at all,” cries Kerr
Mudgeon. “They may make speeches about it,
and pass resolutions by the bushel; but it is my
candid opinion that it grows obstinater and obstinater
every day. It never yields an inch, and a man
has to push, and to scramble, and to fight forever to
make any headway for himself—black and blue
more than half the time. Every day shoots up
all over rumpuses and rowses. But, never mind—the
world needn’t flatter itself that it’s a going
to conquer Kerr Mudgeon and to put him down
too, as it does other people. Kerr Mudgeon knows
his rights—Kerr Mudgeon is as good as anybody
else. Kerr Mudgeon will fight till he dies. He was
never made to yield, and he never intends to yield,
so long as his name is Kerr Mudgeon. It’s a good
name—never disgraced by movements of the knuckle-down
character, and I’m determined to carry on the
war just as all the Mudgeons did that went before
me. If a horse kicks me, I’ll kick him back; and
I wouldn’t get out of the way, like Mr. Daniel
Tucker in the song, if a thirty-two pound shot was
coming up the street, or a locomotive was a whizzin’
down the road. Stand up straight—that’s my
motto. Give ’em as good as they can bring; that’s
the doctrine; and while a single bit of Kerr Mudgeon
remains—while any of his bones hang together,
that’s him squaring off right in the centre of the
track, ready for you, with his coat buttoned up and
a fist in each of his hands.”
Kerr Mudgeon’s face is settled grimly into the
aspect of habitual defiance. His brows are forever
knitting, not socks or mittens, but frowns, and his
mouth is knotted like a rope. When he looks
around, it seems to be an inquiry, as to whether
any gentleman present is disposed to pugilistic encounter,—if
so, he can be accommodated; and the
whole disposition of his garments indicates contention—war
to the knife.
Kerr Mudgeon complains that he has no friends,
and is beginning to stand solitary and alone, with
but a dreary prospect before him, in a world that
grows “obstinater and obstinater every day;” and
he has yet to learn, if such learning should ever
penetrate through the armor of hostility wherewith
he is begirt, that perhaps, if we desire to have a
smooth and easy time of it, we must ourselves
begin by being smooth and easy. The belligerent
ever meets with belligerents. There’s no difficulty
about that. There is a sufficiency of war in every
atmosphere, if you are disposed to condense it
upon yourself; and no one eager to enjoy the pleasure,
need wander far in search of quarrels. Kerr
Mudgeon finds them everywhere—“rumpuses and
rowses”—But it is a shrewd doubt whether one’s
general comfort is greatly promoted by the aggravation
of rudeness and roughness. It is easier to bend
a little to inclement blasts, than to be snapped off
by perpendicular resistance—easier to go round an
obstacle than to destroy your temper and your
clothing, in the exhausting effort to clamber over
it; and it may be said of every quarrel in which
Kerr Mudgeonism is engaged, that probably both
parties are in fault, though Kerr Mudgeonism is in
all likelihood, the responsible party.
Yet, “you wont, wont you?” is a great temptation
to combativeness and destructiveness. Is it
not, all ye people of the Kerr Mudgeon temperament?
Painted by Frankenstein Engraved by A. W. Graham
PITTSBURG Engraved expressly for Graham’s Magazine
———
BY E. M. SIDNEY.
———
As some vast heart that high in health
Beats in its mighty breast,
So, to and fro, thy living wealth
Throbs through the boundless West.
Thy keels the broad Ohio plow,
Or seek the Atlantic main;
Thy fabrics find the Arctic snow,
Or reach Zahara’s plain!
Toil on, huge Cyclop as thou art,
Though grimed with dust and smoke,
And breathing with convulsive start—
There’s music in each stroke!
What if the stranger smirch and soil
Upon thy forehead sees?
Better the wealth of honest toil
Than of ignoble ease!
And yet thou’rt beautiful—a queen
Throned on her royal seat!
All glorious in emerald sheen,
Where thy fair waters meet.
And when the night comes softly down,
And the moon lights the stream,
In the mild ray appears the town,
The city of a dream!
———
BY F. E. F., AUTHOR OF “AARON’S ROD,” “PRIZE STORIES,” ETC.
———
Ros. Farewell, Monsieur traveler: Look you, lisp, and wear strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own
country; be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are; or I will
scarce think you have swam in a gondola. As You Like It.
“I did not see you at the opera, last night, Mrs.
Fielding,” said Miss Collingwood.
“No,” replied the other, “I was not there. How
were you pleased?”
“Oh, delighted!” returned the young lady, with
animation. “It is an excellent company. The tenore
has a superb voice, and the prima donna is charming.
And everybody was there. You mean to go
to-morrow, I suppose?”
“No,” said Mrs. Fielding; “the last time I heard
that opera was in Paris. Lablache, Tamburini and
Persiani sang; and I cannot bear to destroy the
illusion by seeing it here. When one has been
abroad, and heard music in such perfection, it spoils
one for all one can get in this country.”
This was said in such a tone of superiority, that
Miss Collingwood was a little dashed; but she
replied,
“Oh, we cannot expect Lablache and Persiani;
but still, this is an excellent company.”
“I’m told they are very tolerable,” replied Mrs.
Fielding, in the same languid, supercilious manner.
“But music, I think, should know no mediocrity.
Now, in Paris, you have every thing in such perfection!
There was nothing I enjoyed so much
while I was abroad, as the opera. Persiani is an
exquisite creature! And Lablache—what a voice!
And Tamburini!” And Mrs. Fielding rolled up her
eyes in an ecstasy, quite breathless and overcome
by her recollections. “I don’t think,” she continued
“I could bear hearing the same music sung by
second-rate, or probably third or fourth-rate artistes,
which I presume these people are. They are from
Havana, I believe?”
“Yes,” answered Miss Collingwood, now quite
ashamed of the enthusiasm with which she had first
spoken of them, and almost thankful she had not
mentioned the “season tickets,” she had been before
on the point of announcing with such pride and
delight. “We had a very full house,” she continued,
however, too full of the subject to desist from it
altogether, though not daring to dwell upon the
music any longer. “Everybody, you know, was
there; and I am told every seat in the house is
engaged for to-morrow.”
“Is it possible!” exclaimed Mrs. Fielding. “How
these people do succeed here! Poor wretches, that
can scarce get an engagement at one of the third
or fourth-rate theatres abroad, have nothing to do
but to come to this country to make their fortunes.”
“But Mr. Livingston told me that he had heard
Signora D. in Paris, at the Grand Italian Opera,”
replied Miss Collingwood, plucking up a little courage.
“He never heard her in the world, at the Grand
Italian Opera,” replied Mrs. Fielding, as decidedly
as if she had kept the run of all the operas and
prima donnas from the beginning. “She sang some
ten or fifteen years ago, at the French opera, the
Opera Comique, which is quite a different affair;
but that, as I say, was ten or fifteen years ago—and
fifteen years is the life of an opera singer. She is
quite passée now, and could not, at the present time,
get an engagement at even one of the minor theatres
in Paris.”
“She has a beautiful voice,” persisted Miss Collingwood,
“and sings with exquisite taste and execution.”
“Oh,” replied Mrs. Fielding, raising her shoulders
with what was meant for a French shrug, “she is
the debris of a good singer, I admit. Her style must
be correct ever to have sung even at the Opera
Comique. All of course we can expect in this
country, are those whose best days are gone
abroad.”
“Did you see much of the Falconers, when you
were abroad, Mrs. Fielding?” resumed Miss Collingwood,
glad to turn the conversation from music,
which she was all but told she had no opportunity
or possibility of understanding.
“I merely met them,” replied Mrs. Fielding, in a
somewhat slighting manner. “They were in no
society, you know,” she continued, as if the inferior
circle in which they moved was such as to prevent
their coming in contact with herself, who was of
course in a very different atmosphere.
“Indeed!” said Miss Collingwood, with much
interest and curiosity in her manner; “we heard
here that they were in a good deal of society. Mrs.
Falconer told me they were at a concert at Prince
B.’s, where they saw the countess G. and Lady A.
and all the great people; and they were presented
at court—and—I don’t know where they were
not.”
“Oh, my dear!” ejaculated Mrs. Fielding, as if
too much amused by their assurance to utter more
on the instant.
“But was it not so?” pursued Miss Collingwood.
“They may have been at a charity concert at the
Prince B.’s,” replied Mrs. Fielding; “I think it very
probable—for these poor nobles are very glad to sell
tickets on such occasions to any one who can afford
to buy them; and, indeed, they prefer Americans,
as people they never can come in contact with
again. But in no other way, I assure you, could
they ever have been at the Prince B.’s. As to being
presented at court, anybody can—that is, I mean,
who takes letters to our Ambassador. Poor Mr. L.,
I used to pity him, for the people he was obliged to
present! I do assure you, one often blushes for
one’s countrymen abroad!” continued Mrs. Fielding.
“Such looking, such dressed creatures as they are!
And talking so loud, too! And it is so difficult to
make foreigners understand that these vulgarians
are not first class Americans. I have often tried to
explain it; but I seldom found Europeans, even of
the highest rank, who understood our society.”
“But that would not apply to the Falconers,”
persisted Miss Collingwood. “They had as much
right to good society abroad as anybody.”
“Perhaps so,” replied Mrs. Fielding; “I did not mean
them, particularly. But, my dear Miss Collingwood,
it amuses me to hear these people talk of the society
they were in abroad. Now, they were in no society
at all. It’s not the easy matter to get in society in
Europe, that it is in this country. People do not
throw their doors open to Americans, I assure you,
unless, indeed, under very extraordinary circumstances.”
“But I understood the Falconers had excellent
letters,” continued Miss Collingwood; “and, then,
their fortune would give them every facility, you
know, that could be desired.”
“Letters!” repeated Mrs. Fielding, contemptuously.
“It does amuse me to hear you Americans
talk of letters. I should like to know who has a
right to give them! They might as well have taken
so much waste paper abroad! And, as to their fortune!
What is an American fortune in Europe!”
continued Mrs. Fielding, warmly, (for her husband’s
means were quite limited;) just enough to make
them conspicuous without being sufficient to give
them consequence! “Of all the people one meets
traveling, there are none so ridiculed or ridiculous
as our millionaires, who think their money must
carry them through every thing. They are cheated
and fleeced, and laughed at by the very people who
are cheating them. No, my dear Miss Collingwood,
I don’t deny that it is a very pleasant thing to have
money abroad, as well as at home; but don’t suppose
that it is going to give you any consequence
there. In a polished society like that, education,
accomplishments, personal qualifications, are all an
American can hope to rest any claim upon at all.
Now, I don’t mean to say that we had any superior
claims of any kind; but, owing to some circumstances,
we saw society that few Americans are
ever admitted in. My mother’s English relatives
treated us with the utmost kindness, and through
Sir Frederick T., we really had opportunities that
were very gratifying, of seeing every thing that was
desirable. We could not have traveled under more
delightful auspices.”
This was said with an air of careless modesty, as
if announcing a fact about which there was no
dispute.
“How charming it must have been!” exclaimed
Miss Collingwood. “And did you really find the
higher classes so superior to ours, Mrs. Fielding?”
“Oh, my dear!” ejaculated Mrs. Fielding, “unfortunately
there’s no question about it! I sometimes
almost regret our visit to Europe, on that account.
It does spoil one so for home.”
While she was still speaking, the Falconers entered.
They and Mrs. Fielding had not met (being
residents of different cities) since their return from
Europe. They greeted each other with great cordiality,
and were, during the first few minutes of
their interview, so occupied with what really seemed
the pleasure of seeing each other, that Miss Collingwood,
the lady on whom they were calling, seemed
in a fair way of being forgotten. After having, however,
inquired and taken the address of the Falconers,
Mrs. Fielding took her leave of the party. After
a few minutes’ general conversation, Miss Collingwood
said,
“I observed you at the opera, last night, Miss
Falconer; how were you pleased?”
“Very well,” replied the young lady. “It is not a
first-rate company, of course—but very fair.”
“I am glad to hear you say so,” replied Miss Collingwood,
eagerly, “for it struck me as such; but
Mrs. Fielding spoke of its being so very inferior, that
I supposed I must be mistaken. Indeed, I take it
for granted, that hearing such music as she has heard
at the opera, in Paris, must make one fastidious.”
Miss Falconer smiled as she replied,
“I don’t think Mrs. Fielding heard music enough
at the Italian Opera, in Paris, to spoil her for any
she may hear in this country.”
“Why,” returned Miss Collingwood, with the
sudden expression of one who has caught a new
light, “she tells me she has heard Lablache, Tamburini,
Persiani, &c.”
“Of course,” replied Miss Falconer. “Everybody
hears them once or twice. But what is it to hear
an opera once?”
“But why only once or twice?” inquired Miss
Collingwood.
“It’s so expensive,” replied Miss Falconer. “I
forget what our box cost us—but something enormous.
I know papa said it was one of our principal
expenses in Paris. And the Fieldings, you know,
are in very moderate circumstances. I doubt
whether Mrs. Fielding was ever a second time at
the Grand Opera. The minor French theatres are
cheap enough; but to hear these great singers
repeatedly, really costs a young fortune. Indeed,
Mrs. Fielding,” she continued, laughing, “may go
and hear this company with profit, if not pleasure;
for she knows nothing of music. It was the spectacle,
I do believe, she enjoyed, more than the music,
when she was there.”
“She seems to have enjoyed her visit to Europe
excessively,” returned Miss Collingwood.
“Yes, so she says,” replied the other; “and I am
surprised at it, too.”
“Indeed! Why so?”
“Oh, they traveled with no advantages; and I
should not think there was much pleasure in seeing
merely the outside of places.”
“But I understood they had peculiar advantages,”
persisted Miss Collingwood; “particularly with regard
to society. Their cousin, Sir Frederick T.,
was very kind to them.”
“I know—they are forever talking of Sir Frederick
T. But, after all, who is Sir Frederick T.? A
mere country baronet! The idea of his introducing
American cousins, is amusing!”
Miss Collingwood laughed.
“You throw quite a new light on the subject, Miss
Falconer. Here Mrs. Fielding has been quite dazzling
poor simple me, who took it all for gospel. She
really made me feel as if I knew nothing of either
music, men or manners. I was ignorant enough to
suppose that Sir Frederick T. or sir anybody could
introduce whoever they pleased.”
“It’s just as much as those people, the poorer
branches of the nobility, I mean, can do to keep
their own footing,” replied Miss Falconer, “let alone
bringing in American relations. On the Continent,
if you have money, the thing is easier. Democracy
and poverty have made greater strides there. The
golden key is a passée partout in Paris. Without it,
to be sure, there is little to be enjoyed; with it, much,
indeed.”
“Did you see much of the Fieldings, abroad?”
inquired Miss Collingwood, amused, and curious to
hear what version Miss Falconer would give of the
acquaintance with her country people in Europe.
“No,” she replied. “It was such a journey to get
up to their rooms in Paris, that I only called a few
times. Climbing those Parisian stairs is no small
exertion, I assure you, without you are really interested
in the people you are visiting.”
“I was asking Mrs. Fielding if it was not a
fatiguing way of living, but she said, ‘No—that you
become so accustomed to it, that you never think of
it, and that, though her apartments were au troisième,
she lived in such a state of excitement she was not
conscious of undergoing more fatigue than when at
home.’ ”
“Her apartments au troisième!” exclaimed Miss
Falconer, laughing heartily. “Now, Miss Collingwood,
did Mrs. Fielding really speak of being au
troisième—are you sure?”
“Yes, certain. Why—were they not? I thought
everybody lived somewhere between heaven and
earth, in Paris,” said Miss Collingwood.
“To be sure they do,” replied Miss Falconer;
“and the Fieldings were considerably nearer heaven
than earth. Why, we were au troisième. The
Fieldings were au hautième, just under the roof;
the very attics, I believe, for I am sure there could
not possibly have been another story above. I
know I never climbed so high in my life, except
when I went up Mount Vesuvius, as I did when I
called to see the Fieldings. I should think they must
be glad to be home, to some of the comforts of life,
again.”
“But I thought Paris was such a cheap place,”
continued Miss Collingwood.
“Cheap! Yes, so it is, if you are willing to live
as Parisians live—that is, with no luxuries, and
scarce any comforts. I suppose you can live cheap
here, if you take attic rooms, with hardly any furniture,
and eat in all sorts of odd places. That is the
way half the French people live, and Americans
can do it too, if they please, abroad—which they
cannot do at home. Pleasures are cheap, to be
sure; that is, of the inferior sort. But I should say
there was scarce enough to compensate people
accustomed to a different style of living, in French
vaudevilles and street amusements, for such sacrifices.”
“Hardly,” replied Miss Collingwood; “but how
is it, then, that you are so delighted with Europe?”
“Why, in the first place, we don’t all live exactly
in the way I have described. You can have luxuries
and comforts too, beside exquisite pleasures, if
you please to pay for them. But then the expense
is enormous.” And so Miss Falconer continued to
let Miss Collingwood know that what she had been
saying only applied to other Americans, not to
themselves at all. “And, moreover,” she continued,
“there is much of excitement and novelty abroad,
that carries one through a great deal. And perhaps
most of us think it was pleasanter in looking back
than it was in the reality. I dare say Mrs. Fielding
actually believes she enjoyed herself excessively.
But I should say the pleasantest part of her trip was
the getting home,” she added, smiling.
“Then you do not think she need be spoilt for
America, by all she has seen abroad?” pursued Miss
Collingwood.
“She spoilt! No, indeed!” replied Miss Falconer.
“I don’t deny that there is a great deal to be enjoyed
there, that can’t be enjoyed at home. But I think
Mrs. Fielding may enjoy a great deal at home, she
certainly never enjoyed abroad.” And so saying,
Miss Falconer rose and bid Miss Collingwood good
morning.
“It’s very strange,” observed Miss Collingwood,
afterward, to her sister, “that so few Americans
give the same story of themselves and each other
abroad. They all tell you that they only were in
society, and that others were not. It is really
amusing to hear them. I wonder, now, who tells
the truth, the Fieldings or the Falconers?”
“Both, and—neither,” replied her sister, laughing.
“How so?”
“They tell truth of each other, but not of themselves.
I mean,” continued the younger Miss Collingwood.
“That may be it!” exclaimed Miss Collingwood.
“That never occurred to me before. And then, how
they all talk of being ‘spoilt for this country,’ by
their travels.”
“So they are,” rejoined the younger sister—“truly
spoilt. How few of them you find return
really improved! They are spoilt, though not from
excess of fastidious refinement, but from absurd airs.
Of all things, I dread hearing, ‘When I was abroad.’
I am always sure some absurd impertinence is
coming. Then the fine acquaintances they all have;
when, depend upon it, they know nobody who is
anybody. There’s Mrs. Ashland, who wont let
you admire even a beauty she don’t happen to
fancy; but she’ll tell you, ‘It is such an American
taste;’ or, ‘In this country you don’t understand
this, that and the other.’ Ah! that ‘In this country,’
is the worst of all. Just as if ‘this country’ was not
their country! And then, if they have only been in
Paris a fortnight, they are omnipotent on fashions
for the rest of their days.”
“But, surely,” resumed the elder sister, “there
must be a great deal that is improving and delightful
in foreign travel.”
“I have no doubt,” replied the other, “that there
is a great deal to be enjoyed, as Miss Falconer says;
and a great deal to be suffered, too,” she added,
laughing, “if the whole truth were known. Much to
be learnt, too. Intelligent, well-educated people,
find pleasure everywhere—a great deal, no doubt,
abroad—and, as Miss Falconer says, more in getting
home. One thing, I am sure of, however. I never
found anybody who had improved abroad, who was
spoilt for home.”
———
BY J. BAYARD TAYLOR.
———
Numb and chill the Savoyard wandered
By the banks of frozen Seine,
Oft, to cheer his sinking spirit,
Singing low some mountain strain.
But, beside the wintry river,
Rose the songs of green Savoy,
Sadder than ’mid Alpine valleys,
Sung by many a shepherd boy!
From the bleak and distant Vosges
Swept the snowy whirlwind down,
Flinging wide its shifting mantle
Over slope and meadow brown.
Like a corpse, the silent landscape
Lay all stark and icy there,
And a chill and ghostly terror
Seemed to load the leaden air.
Still that shivering boy went forward,
Though his heart within him died,
When the dreary night was closing
Dull around the desert wide.
Sobbing wild in lonely sorrow,
On his numb cheek froze the tear;
And his footstep, faint and weary,
Heeded not the gathering fear!
Through the desolate northern twilight,
To his home-sick pining, rose
Visions of the flashing glaciers,
Lifted in sublime repose.
Horns of Alp-herds rang in welcome,
And his mother kissed her boy!—
Back his bounding heart was hurried
From the vales of dear Savoy!
For, amid the sinking darkness,
Colder, chillier, blew the snows,
Till but faint and moaning whispers
From his stiffening lips arose.
Then beside the pathway kneeling,
Folded he his freezing hands,
While the blinding snows were drifted
Like the desert’s lifted sands.
As in many an old cathedral,
Curtained round with solemn gloom,
One may see a marble cherub
Kneeling on a marble tomb!
With his face to heaven upturning,
For the dead he seems to pray,
While the organ o’er him thunders,
And the incense curls away!
Thus he knelt, all pale and icy,
When the storm at midnight passed,
And the silver lamps of heaven
Burned above the pausing blast.
In that starry-roofed cathedral
Knelt the cherub form in prayer,
While the smoke from snowy censers
Drifted upward through the air.
Though no organ’s grand vibration
Shook the winds that lingered near,
Think ye not the hymns of angels
Trembled on his dying ear?
OR THE TRIALS OF A HEART OF PRIDE.
———
BY JAMES S. WALLACE.
———
